The Backstagers and the Final Blackout

by Andy Mientus

  “Ugh, why are you always right?” Timothy said, playfully butting Jamie’s shoulder with his head. “I’m just gonna focus on this fall, when we’re on our own on that big old campus. Won’t it be something to meet up for breakfast in the student union every chilly morning and walk to classes together? Classes in things we actually want to study? Heck, I’m even excited to go to football games!”

  “Now you’re talking crazy,” Jamie said with a laugh.

  “I’ll learn to love them, because I’ll be there with you.”

  Jamie didn’t say anything back, but he reached over and grabbed Timothy’s hand. They drove in silence for a moment. Then, Jamie saw something unexplainable.

  “What in the world . . .” he whispered as he pointed to a billboard towering over the busiest intersection on Maple Avenue.

  “Whoa,” Timothy said.

  THE SHOW MUST GO ONWARD!

  BLAKE MCQUEEN

  FOR ST. GENESIUS DRAMA CLUB PRESIDENT

  “I can’t believe it,” Timothy said. “How much do you think that cost?!”

  “Probably a whole semester’s tuition,” Jamie said, shaking his head. “Some people . . .”

  They parked in the student lot and lumbered toward the school, flanked by dozens of other weary-looking seniors. When they reached the front doors, they were stopped by a flyer in their faces.

  “Kevin McQueen for Drama Club Presi—oh,” Kevin McQueen said. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was you guys.”

  “No worries,” Jamie said. “What are you doing out here? Only the underclassmen in the Drama Club can vote in the election. Why hand out flyers to all of the seniors?”

  “We’re trying to make the whole school aware of the issues at play here.” He gestured to a small folding table with a hand-drawn campaign sign next to the front doors, where a couple of Onstagers were speaking to students and handing out homemade brochures. “I feel like if everyone is talking about this, it might show some of the undecided Onstagers that the majority of the student body stands with you guys.”

  “I appreciate that,” Timothy said, “but maybe you should—”

  “Oh!” Kevin interrupted. “Would you wanna man the table for a period or two when you have a break in your exam schedule? I think that hearing directly from the Backstagers would be a really effective way to reach—”

  “Kevin, we’d love to,” Jamie said, “but don’t you think it’s going to be hard to make any noise with that billboard out there?”

  “What billboard?” Kevin asked. Timothy and Jamie shared a look.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Saaaaaaashaaaaaaa,” The voice cooed. “Saaaaaasha. Sasha. Sasha.”

  Sasha opened his eyes.

  He was suspended in an iridescent pink mist, infinitely vast in all directions. Shining bubbles of all sizes slowly rose all around him—or were they falling? It was impossible to tell, because the space had no up or down.

  When Sasha’s vision cleared, he saw the source of the beautiful voice that called his name: a gentle being made of pure light.

  “Genius!” Sasha called. “It’s good to see you!”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Sasha,” the muse said. Sasha had not seen his muse since they gifted him the Master Switch, deep in the backstage.

  “Where are we?” Sasha asked.

  “In your mind. I think it’s very lovely here.”

  “It IS. I’ve never looked this deeply inside my own mind before.”

  “Well, it’s here for you whenever you need a peaceful space of your own.”

  “What are we doing here?” Sasha asked. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

  “I appear when you have an idea, or rather when you are about to have an idea. I am the herald of epiphany,” Genius replied. “So perhaps there is something you must tell me.”

  Sasha thought hard for a minute. He’d been turning the Backstagers’ dilemma over and over in his head and couldn’t think of a way out of it. He did have a lot of questions for Genius, though.

  “Can I ask you something instead?”

  “Of course,” Genius said. “I’m here for you.”

  “Why me?” Sasha asked. “Why am I the only Backstager with a muse? Why was I chosen for the Master Switch? What is going to happen now that it’s lost?”

  Genius chuckled softly and said, “Oh, Sasha. I am but a reflection of your own mind. I can’t know what’s in the future. But let me ask you a question now. Why not you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why shouldn’t you be the special one? Because you are smaller than the others? Because you lead with your heart? Because you make mistakes sometimes? Because you see the world with those wide-open eyes of yours?”

  Sasha had never thought about it before, but put like that, he realized that none of those things ought to make someone unworthy of special talents.

  “Maybe I am here to remind you not to diminish yourself or your ideas, even if the rest of the world does. When your intuition strikes, trust it.” The muse smiled and began to glow even brighter, incandescent like the sun. “Because even if no one else knows, you and I know that your ideas are truly . . .”

  “Genius,” Sasha whispered, as he snapped awake.

  “What?” Jory asked.

  He was standing over Sasha’s bed. Sasha rubbed his eyes and sat up. It took Sasha a moment to get his bearings. The room was dark but for a tiny nightlight that illuminated the side of Jory’s face. The air had the damp smell of spring in the woods and the crickets outside were singing loud enough to make themselves heard over the whirring fan that sat slowly turning beside an open window. Yes, they were still in the company housing at the Forest of Arden. He turned to look at the little digital clock next to his bed. 3:33 a.m.

  “Nothing, sorry,” Sasha said. “Just a dream.”

  “Sorry to wake you,” Jory said, “but you have to get up and get dressed.”

  “Is something wrong? Is it Thiasos?”

  “Reo’s back. And he’s found something.”

  Sasha got dressed quickly, and he and Jory tiptoed down to the common room, where the other Backstagers were gathered around a single lantern and Reo. Beckett brought Reo a cup of tea, and he sipped it slowly, a serious look on his face.

  “Reo, are you okay?” Sasha whispered.

  “I am, thanks Sasha.”

  “What did you find?” Aziz asked.

  “Give him a minute,” Beckett said.

  “No, it’s okay, we have no time to waste,” Reo replied. He set down the cup of tea. “On our way here, I decided to ask my cards for a clue about where to start looking. I kept drawing the same card, again and again—the Tower. I used that image as my focal point and wandered the tunnels. How long has it been?”

  “Two days,” Hunter replied.

  “Wow. Anyway, I just held that image in my mind as I walked and suddenly . . . there it was.”

  “What?” Jory asked.

  “The Tower itself. A huge, stone tower, just like on the card, standing right in the middle of the tunnels. I tied the cord I’d brought to the front door and followed the strand back. It will lead us directly there.”

  “Reo, that’s excellent!” Aziz said, leaping to his feet. “Let’s get our supplies together and head there now.”

  “Wait,” Reo said, stopping him. Aziz sat again. “There’s something you all have to know about the Tower card in tarot. It’s . . . intense.”

  “Intense how?” Beckett asked.

  “It means a final reckoning. A violent upheaval. Permanent change. When the Tower shows up in a reading, you can expect your status quo to be burnt to the ground so that something new can begin.”

  “So what does it mean for us?” Hunter asked.

  “I just have this feeling . . . this intuition . . .”

  Sasha’s eyes widened a bit.

  “I feel like once we walk through the doors of that Tower,” Reo said, “nothing will ever be the same. That it’s the point of no return.”
/>   CHAPTER 12

  “Are you alive?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re an animal?”

  “YES.”

  “So you’re dead?”

  “Big surprise there.”

  “Shhh, Dimitri. Okay, so you’re a dead animal.”

  “Don’t waste questions, Dia.”

  “Don’t tell me how to play the game, Aleka.”

  “We’re almost there, guys,” Niko said. “Okay, do you have fur?”

  “Yes,” Tasia replied. She chewed the end of her long blond hair like a pacifier.

  “Are you big or small?”

  “Small.”

  “Are you a rat?”

  “No.”

  “Strange, you look like a rat.” Aleka hissed, pulling her long black hair away from her face as if she were lifting a veil just to hurl the insult.

  “That’s not FUNNY!” Tasia shouted as she picked up a book off the stack on the floor and tossed it at Aleka. Aleka dodged it, catlike, and furrowed her brow. Just as she was about to pounce, her brother Niko stood and restrained her.

  “Okay,” Niko said. “Maybe it’s time for another game.”

  But it wasn’t the game that was grating on the Thiasos Backstagers. Even if they were sitting in total silence with their eyes shut, they could all feel the walls of the youth wing of Thiasos headquarters closing in on them. It was just big enough to hold beds and trunks for the five of them, so each Backstager made sure their personal space was very clearly theirs. The result was a tiny room that looked like a Frankenstein’s monster of five separate rooms smashed together. It was a jumbled, cluttered space and they had been locked there, with all privileges revoked, ever since the fiasco with the God Mic.

  Aleka and Niko should have known better than to swipe one of Thiasos’s artifacts and go after Jory’s Designer’s Notebook on their own, but they’d just wanted to make their mom proud. The gamble had landed them here, locked in a small dormitory with a pile of boring Greek mythology books they’d all read a hundred times, a puzzle of the Parthenon, and the company of their fellow Backstagers. That company had grown stagnant after a couple of weeks of confinement, and now they all seemed poised to rip each other to shreds at any moment.

  “How about the compliments game?” Niko asked. “I’ll go first. Aleka, that particular shade of black you’re wearing really suits your—”

  “Shut up,” Aleka said, in no mood for Niko’s signature charm. Niko shrugged his shoulders and went back to admiring his olive complexion and perfectly sleek hair in a mirror on the wall.

  “Yes, how about we all just shut up,” Dimitri suggested, his already low, droll voice descending to depths that seemed impossible for a human voice to go.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” Dia said as she scribbled a doodle in marker on the toe of her sneaker. With her multiple piercings, bracelets, chains, and choker, the doodle was just one more embellishment on the walking canvas that was Dia.

  The Thiasos Backstagers retreated to their beds.

  There was peace for maybe forty-five seconds, until Tasia blurted out, “For the record, I was a dead SQUIRREL.”

  And in an instant, Aleka was on top of Tasia, bashing her with her own pillow as hard as she could. Niko and Dimitri leaped up to stop the onslaught while Dia just rolled her eyes and kept doodling. The scuffle was interrupted by a knock at the door before any real damage could be done.

  “Lunch already?” Niko wondered as he quickly worked to smooth the hairs that had fallen out of place.

  “I say, when they come in here with the food,” Tasia said, a mess of frizzy blond tangles and torn frills, “we REVOLT! And ESCAPE!” She marched to the door and shouted to the other side, “I hope you’re serving JUSTICE today, because we’re serving REVENGE!”

  She swung the door open and gasped when she was met not by a Thiasos grunt with a platter of underwhelming lunch but by an immaculately dressed woman with a sweeping white hairstyle and a sly expression.

  “MADAM THIASOS,” Tasia cried, backing away and lowering her eyes. “Forgive me, I was only playing around.”

  “Playing is for little girls,” Madam Thiasos said. Tasia nodded and retreated back to her bed.

  “Mother,” Aleka said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “I’m here with good news,” Madam Thiasos said, twisting her lips to a shape that would be a smile if there were any kindness in her heart. “My plan has been executed perfectly and is now complete. We have secured the legendary artifacts that Genesius was hiding: our God Mic, the Master Switch, the Designer’s Notebook, and, much to our surprise, the Ghost Light as well.”

  “They had the Ghost Light, too?” Niko whispered, amazed. “That means—”

  “We now have all but one,” Madam Thiasos said. “The Show Bible.”

  “Where do you think it is?” Niko asked.

  “If we knew that, dear, we’d already have it and would be ready for the Final Blackout, wouldn’t we?”

  Niko lowered his eyes.

  “Naturally the Show Bible might take years, or even generations to find,” Madam Thiasos said.

  Aleka, who’d been shielding herself behind her dark hair, lifted the veil once again to say, “I know how to find it.”

  Niko’s eyes darted to his sister. They were already in enough trouble.

  Madam Thiasos let out a strange expiration, half gasp, half laugh.

  “Oh do you?” she said. “Because it seems to me, daughter dear, that your bold ideas about how to find the artifacts landed you all in here.”

  “I found them, didn’t I?” Aleka said.

  “Aleka!” Niko scolded.

  “Without me, Thiasos would still be looking for the Switch, the Notebook, and the Ghost Light. I found them in a few weeks when the organization was taking years.”

  “And lost one of ours in the process!” Madam Thiasos cried.

  “So it’s clear, then,” Aleka said, standing, “that we have to work together.”

  She and her mother stared each other down for a tense beat as Tasia mouthed “Oh. My. GOSH,” to Dimitri across the room.

  Finally, Madam Thiasos narrowed her eyes and asked, “How, pray tell, do you think you’ll find the Show Bible?”

  “Let us out of here and I’ll show you,” Aleka said. “We can start right now if you’d like.”

  Madam Thiasos smiled. She’d raised her daughter well.

  Madam, Aleka, Niko, Dimitri, Dia, Tasia, and two burly, suited Thiasos security guards swept across the lawn toward the cliff at the edge of headquarters property in focused silence. They descended the stone staircase down to a platform overlooking the sea where a small cave was carved into the rock. Inside the cave there was a boulder, which the two security guards rolled aside, revealing an ancient carved archway leading to a sea of stars. It was the original entrance to the backstage.

  The Thiasos crew stepped into the darkness of the tunnels and Aleka reached into a satchel that hung at her side. She pulled out a small wooden box with a metal sliding control on its face and said, “Master Switch, light our way to the Show Bible.”

  She slid the control up and a pool of light appeared a few feet ahead of them. Aleka stepped into the light. It began to dim just as another pool appeared a few feet deeper into the tunnels. She proceeded to the next pool, which produced yet another. It was a path.

  “Are you coming?” Aleka called back to her mother.

  Madam Thiasos nodded to her daughter, impressed.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Whoa,” Jory said.

  “Yeah,” was all Hunter could muster.

  They stood alongside Beckett, Aziz, Sasha, and Reo looking upward in awe.

  They’d followed Reo’s red cord through twists and turns of the tunnels for hours until they reached its end. Reo had tied the cord to the handle of a stark iron door at the base of a monumental, ominous tower. Its walls were free of windows, gargoyles, or ornamentation of any kind, though it was topped with a crown
-like turret that nearly touched the black storm clouds swirling above it. A flash of lighting struck the crown, illuminating its red and gold paint and making the Backstagers jump.

  “We’re not actually going in there,” Beckett said.

  “Yeah, there might as well be a sign that says, ‘Your grisly death, right this way,’” Aziz said.

  “We’ll be together,” Hunter said, looking to Jory, who nodded back bravely. “We got this.”

  As they stepped up to the iron door and pulled it open, they all braced for sheer terror and certain doom. They were surprised then when they were met not with a house of horrors but with a gorgeous lobby, straight out of a Jazz Age hotel.

  Stepping inside, the Backstagers marveled at the gilded walls, plush sofas of leather and green velvet, painted glass lamps, and gleaming wooden tables that surrounded them. Framed paintings and photographs covered the walls depicting dancing couples in beads and top hats, bottles of champagne mid-pop, and tuxedoed horn players wailing away. Jazz music played softly from a Victrola, the earliest kind of home music system, in the corner. There was a reception desk to their right that was unremarkable, except for the fact that it was unmanned. Directly across from the front door was an ornate elevator.

  “. . . Not what I was expecting,” Reo said.

  “Don’t you dare sound disappointed,” Beckett said, chuckling.

  “The Show Bible has got to be on the top floor, right?” Sasha said. “In video games, the loot is ALWAYS on the top floor.”

  “After a crazy boss battle,” Aziz said darkly.

  “Well, luckily there’s an elevator,” Hunter said. “Let’s go!”

  They pushed the call button for the elevator and its doors whooshed open, revealing a shining brass cage car. They stepped in and saw that instead of buttons for each individual floor there was just one, labeled up.

  “Here goes nothing,” Hunter said as he pushed the button.

  And nothing is just what they got. Even though the button lit up, the elevator didn’t even twitch. He pressed the button again. Nothing.