Spark

by Holly Schindler

  “Maybe not,” Nick whispers.

  “What else is there? You won’t have a job—you’ll have to go home. I have to go to school. And the more I think about it, the clearer it all is what’ll happen to me at school. I’ll be bookish, practical Emma Hastings. I’ll go to dances. I’ll meet a nice, sensible boy. The kind of boy my father would approve of. Someone studying to become a doctor or lawyer. And after graduation, we’ll do the sensible thing. We’ll get married. In the beginning, I’ll teach. Probably something in the humanities. Maybe Latin.” She pauses to chuckle. “Latin. A dead language. And then I’ll quit to have children. Two. Maybe three. My days will all be about picking the newspaper off the living-room floor. Tying shoelaces. Measuring out teaspoons of baking soda. I’ll host dinner parties, and my husband’s coworkers will pat me on the head because they like my Jell-O molds and my martinis. We’ll all come back here to visit Dad. Maybe see a show at the Avery now and again. And I’ll be dying inside, trying desperately not to remember the time when the Avery felt magical and our love was exciting and how I became a different person on that stage.”

  “Emma, you’re overreacting.”

  “No. Absolutely not. I know Dad doesn’t like you.”

  Nick frowns. “He doesn’t—”

  “I didn’t say that right. It’s not that he doesn’t like you. He doesn’t like how I feel about you. It scares him. And the idea of what the rest of my life will look like after you’re gone scares me.”

  “Emma! The star needs to take her bow!” George shouts, his pride echoing through the alley.

  “I have to go,” Emma whispers.

  “Emma—our story doesn’t have to end this way. I don’t want it to end.”

  But Emma doesn’t know what else to say. She wants to stay, but her father—and the real world—is calling to her, tearing her away from Nick.

  She pushes past him, through the doorway, back into the Avery.

  Above the alley, the stars remain crossed.

  The scene fades; my phone’s screen is bright white—like a blank page.

  I rush to turn off the phone—and realize the handkerchief I found along with the opera glasses is still balled into my fist.

  I keep the phone on long enough to open my hand and see, in the glow from the screen, that I’m not holding a handkerchief at all. It’s a cloth flower. Under the decades of accumulating dust, it’s still sunset pink.

  It’s Mom’s cloth flower—the one she tucked into the sash on her dress to prove she was, in fact, very grown-up.

  There’s no more music in the theater. No more piano—no more singing.

  Cass and Dylan have returned to the stage. Beneath the light filtering across their faces, Dylan takes hold of Cass’s hand. He draws her close and they begin to dance.

  This is why Cass was so anxious to come. A big part of it, anyway. I can feel it—this is every bit as palpable to me as what had happened between Nick and Emma as they rehearsed.

  No—more so. Because we’re all right here. This isn’t playing out on a screen. It’s live. These are the two hearts Bertie predicted.

  As if to answer me, to tell me I’m right, the Avery’s bronze-colored faces of the theater—hanging on either side of the stage—begin to glow.

  Another glow begins to warm my chest—a tiny flame of jealousy has burst to life inside me. My own first kiss was the stuff of experimentation. Of curiosity. I gravitated toward silly Matt Fredericks for the same reason that Emma read Love Fiction Monthly. This connection between Cass and Dylan—it’s different. It’s the kind of thing that once inspired writers to pen the stories inside Love Fiction Monthly.

  As Dylan strokes Cass’s cheek, the spotlight flicks off. But their feet don’t scatter. Probably, I think, they don’t even know the light is off. Their eyes were already closed.

  But the Avery is telling me this scene is not for my eyes to see. It belongs to Cass and Dylan.

  So I drop Mom’s cloth flower into my backpack. And I slip down the balcony stairs.

  twenty-five

  A man needs his secrets. The phrase sticks in my head like the hook of a catchy pop song. That’s what Dylan said, back at the beginning: A man needs his secrets.

  At this point, my entire life feels like a jumbled mass of secrets—every bit as thick and clumped together as the Avery’s cobwebs. Watching Cass and Dylan in the Avery is my secret. The two of them sneaking off to be together in the theater is theirs. The ever-changing production is a secret the entirety of Advanced Drama keeps from Ms. Drewery.

  Magic is both the most closely guarded secret of all and as out in the open as Mom’s check sheet when Cass and Dylan work together during rehearsal. Cass recites her lines and performs each song with a power that makes every eye in the room glitter; invariably, she sneaks glances at Dylan, her eyes asking him for signs that he approves. His accompaniment is so spot-on that no one—not even Kiki—suggests adding other instruments. Instead, we put two wide-frequency microphones on the soundboard, one on each end. He’s all we need.

  We lean on him, the same way that Emma leaned on Nick. I can tell from the way Dylan squares his shoulders, the way that his notes thunder, that he’s aware of it. That being depended on feels every bit as good to him as it did to that awkward, out-of-town piano player decades ago.

  The air changes when Cass and Dylan are front and center. It buzzes; it’s electric, it hums like the neon sign on the front of the Avery.

  And it powers my pen. Cass and Dylan can’t wait to get back into the theater—and neither can I. I use every opportunity, any excuse I can come up with to get out of the apartment, tiptoe up to the balcony, and write, erase, rewrite, keep scribbling in the back of Bertie’s journal—new scenes, new ideas all competing for space. Not that they need to. New blank pages keep appearing, one right after another, every time I come to the end of one.

  The past and present surround me. When I’m in the Avery, I can let my imagination fly—I describe Cass and Dylan dancing on the stage, and I picture Nick and Emma joining them, their laughter adding new melodies to dance to. Bertie sitting beside me, applauding.

  I’m careful, though—every bit as cautious with Cass and Dylan as I am with Mom. I make sure that Dylan, who is always the first of the two to arrive, never sees me in the balcony. And I always make sure that I’m already safely across the street should Cass stop by Potions on her way home.

  My mind is bursting with thoughts, sometimes coming faster than I can write.

  Thoughts I can’t wait to get back to rehearsal and share.

  On a Saturday morning just days before opening, I wake up to a tongue. And a wet nose.

  I crack an eye, but my eyes are useless without my glasses. All I can see is a gray blob.

  But I have a theory.

  “Jerry Orbach, that better be you,” I mutter, reaching for my glasses on my nightstand. Cat’s-eye glasses to see a dog. There’s irony for you.

  Jerry Orbach climbs into my bed, stretches out beside me.

  “Your mom let us in on her way out,” Cass says, digging through my closet. “She called me early this morning. I promised her we’d help.”

  “Promised her what, exactly? Why are you promising her things that I don’t know about? Why wouldn’t Mom tell me?” Nothing makes sense. Maybe because I have Saturday brain. Maybe because I have dog slobber all over my face. Or maybe, just maybe, none of this actually does make sense.

  “Look, she’s worried about the show,” Cass says. “Apparently, we sold a bunch of tickets in the beginning, but sales have slowed to a crawl since. I promised we’d help out. You know—with the promos. Print ads are apparently not cutting it anymore. We have an interview.” She’s wearing what would be a decidedly normal outfit—black slacks and a black-and-white-striped blouse—if it wasn’t for the yellow plastic platform shoes. When she catches me looking, she shrugs. “I gotta be me.”

  “Wait. An interview? I don’t know anything about interviews.”

  “She thoug
ht you’d say that. She thought I’d do a better job of getting you to the station.”

  Jerry Orbach moans as I pull my legs out from under the blankets. “Where’s Mom, anyway?”

  “She had some stuff to do. We’re getting close, you know.”

  “Yeah. I’m aware.”

  “I mean to opening night.”

  “Right. I was following.”

  “Quin, don’t you have anything in your closet with any personality at all?”

  “I might be able to help you pick something out if I knew exactly where we were going.”

  Cass finally pulls out a simple white blouse and a pair of dark jeans. “My favorite radio station,” she announces. “Hurry up. We’ve got to get Jerry Orbach back home—and we’re picking Dylan up on the way.”

  We drop off Jerry, then hit the Michaelses’ house, which is neither as tiny as my own apartment nor as sprawling as Cass’s house. It’s average, in the same way I suppose Dylan is always wishing that he could be average. He emerges through the front doorway in khakis and a button-down shirt.

  I start to get into the backseat, but Cass shoots me a what’s up with you? frown. I realize I’m a hair from giving my eavesdropping away—the only reason I’d ever let Dylan have my seat is because I knew, based on what I’d seen at the Avery, that things were changing between him and Cass. So I pretend I was only shifting my weight.

  The radio station’s a hole in the wall in a small shopping center off the highway. The inside has room for a couple of desks facing a bunch of dials and gauges. On one of the desks, a computer monitor’s screen saver displays the station logo.

  And both desks hold microphones. It’s the microphones that draw Cass’s and Dylan’s attention.

  The DJ’s mostly bald, with a rim of white hair around the edge of his head. He waves us in. But Cass and Dylan have turned to statues. I have to push them forward.

  “So!” he shouts, gesturing toward the chairs on the opposite side of the desk, each of which has its own small microphone attached to a short stand.

  I glance over my shoulder. Dylan has already relegated himself to the back corner, his chin tucked down toward his chest.

  I sit. Reluctantly, Cass takes a spot beside me.

  “You’re Cass’s favorite station,” I try, nudging her. But she only offers a slight nod. She’s pale and her eyes are wide and she’s chewing on the inside of her cheek—something I haven’t seen her do since the always-horrifying prospect of changing clothes in middle school gym. It hits me: She thought this would be my interview. That her job was getting me to the station. That she and Dylan were just my moral support.

  “Ms. Drewery already told me all about you,” the DJ assures us. “No need for a bunch of fussy introductions. I’m going to ask a few quick questions. We’ll do it live, but with your permission, I’d like to record it, too. So I can replay it several times between now and the day of the show. Help you continue to sell tickets.”

  “That’s—great.” Now it’s my turn to gnaw on my cheek. If that’s any indication of how I’m going to answer his questions on air, this is going to be the worst interview of all time. “I wish Mom was here,” I mutter, hoping it’s too soft for anyone to hear.

  The DJ smiles, trying to calm our nerves. “Ms. Drewery was my teacher. She always did love that theater. It’ll be a delight to help out.”

  And with the flick of a few switches, a light indicates we’re live.

  Cass flinches. And swivels in her chair, turning her birthmark away from the DJ. I can hear what she said back in the Avery—about how it hurts when people pretend her birthmark doesn’t exist. I wonder, with an awful sick feeling, if my forgetting about her birthmark over the years has hurt her, too. But I have no idea how to not call attention to it and not pretend it isn’t there, all at the same time. Right now, I have no idea how to rescue her. How to be her friend. And it terrifies me.

  “We’re joined today by the director and two cast members of the Verona High production of Anything Goes,” he declares, his voice low and smooth, like velvet.

  We nod.

  My face burns. We’re nodding. On the radio.

  “Yes,” I blurt, leaning so close to the microphone that a nearby speaker wails.

  The DJ motions for me to lean back from the mic.

  “Actually,” I manage, “Dylan and Cass are both involved in the music. Cass is the lead—Hope Harcourt. The star of the show. And Dylan’s the musical director.”

  “Well! We certainly need to hear from him. Why don’t you give us a few words—”

  No no no. Me and my big stupid mouth.

  I look over my shoulder. Just as I feared, Dylan’s got that whole wrongly-arrested-and-shackled-to-an-interrogation-desk look.

  “It’s going to be powerful,” I announce for him. “In fact, Dylan’s piano is so strong, it’s the only instrument we need. I mean—you know—it’s more than just a piano. Because. Dylan’s. You know.”

  “Playing it?” Cass says.

  “Right.”

  “Uh-huh.” The DJ’s looking at me as though I’ve blown my nose and laid the damp Kleenex on his desk, right in front of him. He clears his throat. “Well. Since our listeners are fans of musical theater, why not give us a taste.”

  “Taste?” I croak.

  “Sure. Hope, how about a little tidbit to whet our appetites for the show. Why don’t you do a few bars of the title song?”

  Cass’s mouth drops. She clears her throat. Licks her lips—but her mouth is so dry it clicks. “In—” she starts. Coughs. “In—olden . . .”

  She flashes me a look of utter, pure horror. She’s off. Just like she was on day one. Out of tune. She glances behind her. All Dylan can do is open his hands, flash his palms. Helpless.

  I can’t let this go on any longer.

  “You know,” I jump in, “it’s a little hard to perform off the cuff, because we’re doing a—well, a modern version of the play. Updated,” I say, not caring at that moment how close I’m coming to admitting we’ve rewritten giant chunks of the musical. All that matters is helping Cass. I attempt to flash her a comforting smile. “It’s something you have to come see for yourselves.”

  But I can tell my comfort is cold.

  “Yes,” the DJ says, clearing his throat. “That’s Anything Goes at the Verona High auditorium. . . .” As though this interview will ever make anyone want to come see the show now.

  Cass covers her port-wine stain with her hand. The door whooshes as Dylan steps outside, waiting for us on the sidewalk.

  twenty-six

  I’m worried.

  Actually, that doesn’t quite begin to cover it. Saying I’m worried about the production is like saying you’re mildly concerned about finding yourself tied up in the trunk of your kidnapper’s car. This is a level of worry I’ve never reached before. It’s a level of worry I would never have believed, just a couple of months ago, was even possible.

  Our pathetic attempt at an interview has shaken me.

  But it’s shaken Cass and Dylan even more. Reality hit them both back in that radio station—hard enough to erase what they’ve seen in the Avery. They no longer trust that they’ll be stars, not in the Verona High auditorium. Instead, they believe they’ll be as they were in the station, stumbling in front of microphones and an actual audience. They’re quiet during our next few rehearsals. They stare at their sneakers. They don’t so much as look at each other.

  Everyone else is frantically busy at this point—so into their own jobs, I can’t get everyone together at one time so we can run through the whole musical. The class is acting like an entire room of those tiny little rubber balls, all of them bouncing in their own direction. I’m racing around, trying to gather them up. Only I can’t hold them all at once. The balls slip out of my grip, and there they go, bouncing crazily.

  Every day, someone has a new problem. Liz threatens to come unglued because I didn’t mention her idea for the audience to show up in vintage clothing during the
interview. The stage crew complains they don’t have time enough between scenes to change sets—especially since the “stage crew” also consists of cast members who need to change costumes between sets, too. I’m pummeled with questions about lines. “Really,” Kiki says, after reading through an entire page of material. “Does that sound realistic to you?” At which point, I’m suddenly rewriting all over again, until she nods, satisfied that she can pull it off. I’m telling—begging is a better word, actually—Michael (of the red ball caps) to write his own “impossible to memorize” lines on his wrist if he needs to.

  And Toby’s hauling me to the back of the stage to take a look at his “night sky” screen.

  Oh, the screen. He drags me over to look at the thing every day. And it still doesn’t work. Not like Toby thought it would—and not like I imagined. I wish he’d scrap the whole idea. Even knowing what it’s supposed to be, I don’t think “stars” when I see it. I think “old weather-beaten white Christmas lights on a big black sheet.”

  Still, though, this project isn’t mine alone. It’s ours—or it’s supposed to be. Advanced Drama, senior project. So I nod to every one of his new ideas. “You’ll figure it out,” I lie.

  With every rehearsal, it begins to feel a little less like “ours.” It’s more like “fragmented.” Especially since two of us—Cass and Dylan—just keep retreating, moving farther away from the group. Especially since everyone just keeps bouncing around in increasingly crazier ways.

  And every afternoon in the auditorium it happens exactly the same way: right when I start to think I’ve got all the individual questions answered, every potential meltdown averted, and I’m waving my arms, starting to announce it’s time for the whole class to run though the opening scene or that one problematic number, one more time, all together, everyone starts to leave. They’re heading out the auditorium door, because they have tests to study for and jobs to get to.

  Without fail. Every single time.

  And sure, I’m the director—but who am I to say they can’t study? Or keep them so long they wind up getting fired?