Look Both Ways

by Alison Cherry

  He looks at me like, How did I get stuck with this moron? “It’s not,” he says. “Put a twenty-six there and a thirty-six here, okay?”

  “Sure.” I heft one of the lights up onto the bar. “So, where are you from?”

  “Chapel Hill,” Zach says.

  I dig my wrench out of my pocket. “I’ve never been. Do you go to UNC? I’ve heard it’s really—”

  And that’s when the wrench slips out of my hand and falls through the grid in the floor.

  “Heads!” Zach bellows at the top of his lungs, and everyone on the ground ducks and takes a step back. The wrench smacks the stage floor with an enormous bang about five feet from Courtney, who looks up and shouts, “What the fuck, dude!”

  “I’m so sorry!” I yell back.

  Courtney shakes her head. I’m too high up to clearly hear what she says, but I’m pretty sure it’s something like, “Figures.”

  Zach wheels on me. “What the hell was that? I told you to tie your wrench off!”

  “I’m so sorry,” I repeat. It seems like those are the only words I’m going to get to say today. “I didn’t know what that meant.”

  “Jesus. If you don’t know what something means, you ask! She could’ve ended up with a fractured skull! I know you’re used to flouncing around and listening to people clap for you, but what we do up here isn’t a game. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I say, and I’m suddenly afraid I’m going to burst into tears.

  Zach pulls a knife out of his belt and flips it open, and for a second I have this crazy thought that he’s going to stab me and get rid of me once and for all. But instead he storms over to a spool of thin black rope, cuts off a piece, and hands it to me. “This is tie line,” he says, like he’s speaking to someone who might not understand English. “Tie one end to your wrench and the other end to your belt loop. Don’t ever let that happen again.”

  “I won’t,” I choke out.

  “Good. While you’re downstairs getting the wrench, go down to the storage room—it’s the staircase next to the office—and get me two ten-foot jumpers, two feds, and a sidearm, okay?”

  For a second I think he’s messing with me, throwing around words that don’t even mean anything to make fun of all the jargon and tell me he knows how I feel. I smile at him gratefully, but then he says, “Okay?” again, and I realize those were actual instructions.

  “Um. Two ten-foot jumpers, two feds? And…”

  “A sidearm,” he says.

  I know he told me to ask for clarification if I don’t understand something, but everything in storage will probably be labeled, so I should be able to figure this one out on my own. “Okay,” I say, and I head downstairs.

  The air in the basement is dank and clammy and smells vaguely chemical, and one of the fluorescent lights is making an annoying buzzing sound. But at least nobody down here is yelling at me, so I hang out by the bottom of the stairs for a minute and take some deep breaths while I tie my wrench tightly to my belt loop. Finally, when I’m feeling a little calmer, I head down the hall until I find a door with a piece of tape across it that reads “LIGHTING STORAGE.”

  The room is packed floor-to-ceiling with crates of equipment, and absolutely nothing is labeled. The only objects I recognize are some normal lightbulbs like the kind we have at home and a bunch of disassembled Source Fours. I don’t see anything that resembles jumper cables, which I’m pretty sure is what Zach asked for. What am I even doing here? I should be doing vocal warm-ups with Zoe and Livvy and Jessa in a rehearsal room right now.

  There’s nobody else down here, so I grit my teeth and make one of those frustrated screamy noises. It feels good to let some of my aggression out, so I do it again, louder this time, and plant a good, solid kick on a box of metal clamps. It hurts me a lot more than it hurts the box, and that makes me even angrier. I swear and massage my throbbing toes through my sneaker.

  “Um, everything okay in there?”

  I whirl around, and there in the doorway is the tall guy who was sitting behind me at the company meeting last night. He’s got a can of paint in one hand and a cordless drill in the other.

  “I, um,” I stammer. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was down here.”

  The guy nods at the box. “Those C-clamps getting fresh with you?”

  I can’t tell if he’s flirting with me or not, but he’s much cuter than I realized from my brief glimpse yesterday, so I force a smile, and I’m gratified when he smiles back. “I’m pretty sure I showed them who’s boss,” I say.

  “Glad to hear that. Seriously, though, do you need help with something?”

  I don’t want to look stupid in front of this guy, but there’s no way I’m going to find the equipment I need on my own. “Actually, yeah. I need two ten-foot jumper cables, or something? And two feds, and a…sidecar?”

  The guy puts down his stuff and picks up a foot-long bar with a clamp attached to the end. “This is a sidearm. A sidecar is a drink.”

  “I think I’d rather have a sidecar, then.”

  The guy laughs. “Rough morning?”

  “I’ve been on the lighting crew for all of fifteen minutes, and I almost killed someone already.”

  “By accident or on purpose?”

  This time my smile is real. “By accident.”

  “Cool. You don’t look like a murderer, but it never hurts to check.”

  “I mean, if I were a murderer, it’s not like I’d tell you.”

  “Damn. Good point. Maybe I’d better hang on to this.” He clutches the sidearm and strides over to a shelf full of thick black cables. “Jumpers are extension cables; that’s these guys. They’re color-coded by length, and these ones with the yellow tape on the ends are the ten-footers. And this”—he holds up a small device with different kinds of plugs on each end—“is a fed. That’s short for ‘female Edison to male stage-pin adapter.’ Cool?”

  “Thank you so much,” I say. “Nobody upstairs explains anything to me.”

  “You’ll get it,” he says. “I’m Russell, by the way.” He puts down the sidearm and holds out his hand. It’s so enormous that when I take it, I’m reminded of that scene in Beauty and the Beast where Belle’s dainty little hand is engulfed by the beast’s giant paw. It makes me feel tiny and delicate.

  “Brooklyn,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Wait, are we already at the ‘where are you from’ part of the conversation? I’m from Needham, Massachusetts, but I go to NYU.”

  “No, sorry. Brooklyn’s my name. I live in Manhattan.”

  “Well, that’s…unnecessarily complicated,” Russell says, but he smiles. I’m pretty sure he is into me, which is kind of awesome. Having someone to flirt with this summer would improve things a lot. I wonder how long I can draw out this conversation before Zach gets pissed and comes looking for me.

  “Hey,” Russell says, like he’s just remembered something really important. “Did you know that there are more than eighty-five thousand Elvis impersonators in the world?”

  I blink at him, certain I’ve heard him wrong. “I…What?”

  “You could have a city the size of Duluth, Minnesota, made entirely of Elvises,” he says. “How great is that?”

  I didn’t even realize what a big knot I had in the center of my chest until I burst out laughing and feel it start to dissolve. “Why do you even know that?”

  “I collect weird facts.”

  “And what made you think of that now?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. I thought you might be interested. Was I wrong?”

  “No, I definitely feel like a more well-rounded person now that I know that,” I say. I gesture to his drill. “So, you do…set stuff?”

  “Yup. We’re building today, but I mostly do scenic design. I get to assist Olivier von Drasek on Midsummer and Dreamgirls. Have you seen him around?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. What does he look like?”

  “Here.” Russell pulls his phone out of his p
ocket, taps it a few times, and holds it out to me. Smiling up from the screen is a guy a little younger than my dad with a roguish, dimpled smile, an artfully scruffy beard, and a dashing swoop of silver hair. He’s wearing a perfectly fitted suit and a purple tie, and he looks like he’d be more at home walking red carpets than designing sets.

  “Pretty sure I haven’t seen him,” I say. As I hand the phone back, I notice the picture’s not up in the Internet browser; Russell has it saved in his phone. That’s a little bizarre.

  “The man’s a complete genius; his work is so freaking stunning, I can’t even deal. I applied to Allerdale the second I heard he was going to be here. I don’t even believe I get to spend six weeks with him. Being near him is, like, inspirational, you know? I wish I could staple myself to him and soak up his amazingness every second of the day.” He gazes down at the photo. “And look at his hair. How does he even get it to do that?”

  Russell’s face has taken on a whole new quality, like someone has plugged him into one of those jumper cables and lit him up from the inside, and the picture on his phone starts to make sense. I guess he wasn’t flirting with me after all. Well, that totally sucks.

  “That’s really cool,” I say. I hope he doesn’t hear the disappointment in my voice.

  “If I impress him here, I’m hoping he’ll let me assist him on shows in the city this fall. Can you even imagine? I would die to get inside that man’s studio.” The way he says it, it kind of seems like the last word of that sentence should be “pants.”

  Russell hands me the sidearm and picks up his own stuff. “Sorry, I’m rambling. I should probably get back up to the scene shop. But it was really nice to meet you.”

  I’ve only known him five minutes, but I’m already really disappointed to see him go. Even if he’s not going to flirt with me, he’s still the first person who’s been nice to me since last night. All the other acting apprentices feel far away right now, and the lighting people clearly aren’t interested in letting me be one of them. Russell feels like the kind of friend I’m going to be allowed to have here.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” I say. “Thanks so much for the help. See you around?”

  “See you, Brooklyn from Manhattan,” he says. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”

  He gives me such a reassuring smile that I almost feel ready to go back upstairs and face Zach. Almost.

  I wake up the next morning when a balled-up pair of socks bounces off my head.

  I squint against the light coming through the windows and try to move, but my body won’t cooperate. Every single muscle in my arms and legs and back aches like crazy from hauling lights up and down stairs yesterday, and I find a raised bruise under my hair from when I banged my head into a pipe. There is absolutely no way I can make it through nine weeks of Allerdale if I’m going to feel like this every morning.

  “Brooklyn!” Another pair of socks hits my shoulder; Zoe’s obviously not going to leave me alone to wallow. I force myself to roll over.

  “Stop,” I groan. “Sleeping.”

  “You have to get up! We have a master class with Marcus this morning!”

  I’m suddenly very, very awake. “What? Already? We just got here!”

  “I know! Oh my God, what should I wear?”

  I throw the covers off and stumble over to Zoe’s desk, where the electronic call board is up on her laptop screen. Sure enough, the apprentice company is supposed to meet in front of Haydu Hall in an hour. The whole apprentice company, not “the apprentice company minus Brooklyn Shepard.” Somehow I assumed I no longer had any apprentice privileges since I wasn’t cast, but that’s not true at all. I still have a chance to make a good impression on Marcus, the person who matters most. According to my mom, he can work miracles; maybe he’ll make all the misaligned pieces click inside me and today will be the day I transform from a hesitant amateur into a real actor.

  Zoe and I spend way too long getting ready—we want to look pretty enough to be memorable, but casual enough that it doesn’t look like we put in a ton of effort. There’s no time for coffee by the time we’re done, but I have so much nervous adrenaline running through my blood that I don’t even need it. We meet up with Livvy and Jessa in the hall, and as we head over to Haydu, the modern steel-and-glass theater where all the musicals are performed, we try to guess what Marcus will teach us. As we pass Legrand, I worry for a minute that someone will see me and report me for skipping lighting crew, but logically I know that’s not going to happen. Today I’m not an expendable manual laborer. Today I’m a performer.

  About half the apprentices are already gathered in front of Haydu, and everyone looks as apprehensive as I feel. The moment we arrive, the group subtly rearranges itself to center around Zoe, and I realize I’m not the only one who feels her magnetic pull. She seems to know everyone already, though I’m not sure how that’s possible. I make an effort to stay right next to her; the closest moon is the one that shines brightest.

  Two of the boys come over to hug her, and she introduces them to me as Kenji and Todd. Todd’s totally my type—he looks a little like Russell, actually—and I shoot him the flirtiest smile I can muster at nine in the morning. He smiles back, but two seconds later he reaches for Kenji’s hand. Of course.

  “These guys are in Midsummer with me,” Zoe says, leaning an arm on Todd’s shoulder like he’s a piece of furniture. “They’re also the cutest couple on the face of the earth, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “There’s no way we’re cuter than Sean and Dmitri,” Kenji says, and they all laugh, including Livvy. I figure that must be a reference to something that happened at Midsummer rehearsal, and I hate that after only one day, they’ve already formed inside jokes without me. Nobody bothers to fill me in.

  “So, which show are you in?” Todd asks.

  “I’m just in one of the side projects,” I say. “We haven’t started rehearsals yet.”

  Kenji looks confused. “But…you’re an apprentice, right? I thought everyone got cast in something on the main stage.”

  I can feel my face turning pink, but I shrug and try to look like it doesn’t bother me. “I guess my audition wasn’t as good as I thought?”

  “I’m sure it was fine,” Kenji says, but he doesn’t look sure. He looks like he feels really sorry for me.

  “You weren’t cast at all?” Livvy asks. “Man, I’m sorry. I guess I should stop complaining that I have to play a little boy again.”

  “So, what, you’re spending the whole summer doing tech?” asks a redheaded girl who wasn’t even part of our conversation, and I wonder how many other people are listening in. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Everyone’s going to find out eventually anyway.

  “Well, I still have my side project,” I say. “But, yeah, I am doing a lot of tech.”

  “Wow. That’s awful,” says the redhead. She moves a little farther away from me, like my lack of talent might be contagious.

  Before I can answer, Marcus bursts through the doors of Haydu with a big canvas bag over his shoulder, and everyone falls silent and backs up to clear a path for him. He doesn’t even glance at us, and when he hits the bottom of the steps, he keeps going, heading around to the back of the building like we’re not even here. We look at each other, unsure of what to do, but nobody moves until he barks, “Are you coming or not?”

  We scramble into a duckling-like row behind him, and I wonder if we’ve already failed our first test. Jessa strides along in front of me, her giant puffball ponytail bobbing up and down. She looks a lot more confident than I feel, but maybe that’s because she’s so tall. I concentrate on holding my head as high as I can.

  Marcus stops on a stretch of flat lawn surrounded by weeping willow trees. “Sit,” he orders, like we’re dogs, and everyone does. I expect him to lay out what we’re going to do for the next couple of hours, but instead, he launches right in like we’re already in the middle of a conversation. “Acting is not about pretending to be another person. An
y actor who tells you that deserves to be blacklisted from every stage in America. Acting is an embodiment of real life. When you act, you are not recreating. You are creating.”

  I’m not totally sure I agree with that. If the actors are supposed to create the play, what’s the playwright’s job? When we do text analysis and stuff, isn’t the whole point that it helps us understand our characters and embody them instead of drawing from our real lives? I glance around to see how everyone else is reacting and see that most people are nodding, including Zoe.

  “I had a student once,” Marcus continues. “She was rehearsing Lady Macbeth’s raven speech late one night in her room. ‘Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty!’ ” The Shakespearean language rolls off Marcus’s tongue like it’s as familiar to him as a nursery rhyme. “As she said Lady Macbeth’s lines, she noticed the dagger-shaped letter opener on her desk. She grabbed it, feeling the surge of power that the blade in her hand put behind her words. She wasn’t herself any longer. She was Lady Macbeth. She gestured wildly with the knife, heedless of where her blade might fall. She didn’t even realize what she was doing until she had already plunged the knife deep into her own leg.”

  Everyone gasps, and Livvy wraps her arms around her skinny thighs like she’s trying to protect them. I wait for Marcus to say something about how dangerous it is to completely lose ourselves, even as we appear to come apart in front of our audience. But instead he says, “That is dedication to craft. That is what I want to see from each and every one of you. If you are not prepared to stab yourself in the leg for art, you will never truly be an actor.”

  “Um,” says a lanky apprentice with hipster glasses. “Was she okay?”

  Marcus nods. “Yes, after three hours of surgery. She has a scar that will last forever. I envy her that. Every time she looks at it, she will be reminded what true transcendence feels like. Most of us have scars only on the inside.” His eyes sweep around the semicircle. “I need a volunteer.”