Spark (15 page)

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?

So they go.

Every time I kill the auditorium lights, officially marking
the end of another rehearsal, I wish worry had a kill switch, too.

Only it doesn't. My worry keeps ballooning, putting a roadblock between me and—well, just about anything: being able to enjoy the unread paperbacks stacked beside my bed, getting hungry enough to actually want food, sleep.

I'm in the midst of yet another night of staring at the dots that make up the numbers on my bedside digital clock when a warm yellow light flickers. It seems to be coming from the square. I grab my glasses and rush to the window. I crack it, only to find it's turned chilly outside, almost uncomfortably so. I shiver against the night air filtering in through the screen.

Across the square, at the Avery, I catch the flicker again. The full moon is dancing across a second-story window. The breath catches in the back of my throat. When has the moon ever flickered?

I clean my glasses for a second look. The light's not moonlight at all—it's coming from the inside. And a man's solid black silhouette fills the window.

George. Mom said she used to see him up there. In the years after Emma died.

What if he's still there?

Not possible. Then again, considering everything else I've seen, why couldn't it happen? Why couldn't George be up there in that apartment? Why couldn't he be standing in the window trying to get my attention?

I jump up, slam my feet into sneakers, and snatch my backpack—it's got everything: my phone, my flashlight, the file and wire clothes hanger I used weeks ago to pop the theater's skeleton key lock. I leave the apartment quietly, then sprint across the square.

I've never been inside the lobby before, only the house where the seats are—but the minute I burst inside, it smells ancient and forgotten. I bounce my flashlight against wallpaper that dangles in strips, like skin peeling after a sunburn. My scalp tightens, and I erupt in a full-body rash of goose bumps.

I should go home.

This place isn't mine to go poking around in. Sure, I've crawled across the balcony, the stage. But those seem like public spaces to me. Now, here I am, trying to get into a space that's decidedly private: George's home.
It's not right to be in there,
I scold myself. Especially alone. In the dark.

And still, I can't make myself head back to the door.

I hurry past the lobby toward a large doorway. But this leads straight to the sea of audience seats. There has to be another door I've never seen. Some way to get upstairs.

I creep down the center aisle. Climb onto the stage, work my way backstage through the dark labyrinth of dressing rooms. And finally find a narrow hall. I stare down it the longest time, like I'm trying to work up the courage to make a leap off a rocky ledge, straight into a shallow pool below.

Finally, my feet start moving. At the end of the long corridor, I find a small door marked Private.

I jiggle the knob.

It gives, exposing a narrow staircase.

I climb, jumping at every squeak and groan—even those created by my own footsteps.

At the top of the stairs, I step into an apartment that seems eerily frozen in time. I call out tentatively, in little more than a whisper—but there's no answer, no evidence that George (or any living creature, for that matter) has been here for years. Living-room furniture is arranged around a large wooden TV cabinet. I stare at the gray screen, imagining it offered George his only link to the outside world after his daughter's death. His rocking chair, wooden arms discolored from his handprints, sits near a fireplace filled with scorched logs and ashes. A circular braided rug covers the floor, and pictures of a girl in various stages of growing up complete the picture of a lived-in home.

I wander into the kitchen, still pointing my flashlight. Dishes line the cupboard; tarnished silverware fills a drawer. A calendar above the small table reads 1957. The coffee percolator remains on the counter. I avoid the fridge, the pantry, fearing food has rotted and decayed there.

I move back through the living room, toward the two bedrooms. Emma's has been frozen in time even longer than the rest of the apartment—since 1947. A light sweater is draped
over the back of the chair before her study desk. Pens lean against the inside of a cup beneath a student lamp with a green glass shade. Her bedroom contains few girly frills: no lace-trimmed bedspread, no dressing table littered with tubes of lipstick and bottles of perfume. No hand mirror. No jewelry. Tomorrow's clothes—a blue skirt and a white embroidered blouse—are laid out neatly across her plain yellow bedspread. Clothes that Emma never put on.

George's room is part office, part bedroom. His clothes are neatly spaced in a tiny closet; his pocket watch and chain lie on the dresser, covered in a skin of dust. A large rolltop desk is cluttered with files and stacks of paper—the only area of the entire apartment that seems unorganized.

Boxes of paperwork make a fence around the desk—I stop for a moment to lay down my flashlight and pick through the closest container. The cardboard box, wilted by time and humidity, is itself unorganized, stuffed tight with bills and receipts, as well as drawings from Emma's childhood, programs from theatrical performances, playbills, lobby cards for movies, pictures of Emma, Emma's high school term papers. Even a few news clippings—the same articles Mom kept safe in her hatbox. A smaller folder contains copies of Emma's death certificate and George's marriage license to Emma's mother. I stare at the marriage license an especially long time. Emma's mother's name was Avery.

I find myself getting so interested in the more personal
items—family photos, the hand-drawn birthday cards Emma made George—that I sit in his chair and begin to pile the looked-at items in my lap. Once the stack starts to feel heavy and unwieldy against my legs, I lean forward to put it back into the box—but stop when I notice a large envelope with old-fashioned, slanting cursive writing. “Trouble,” it reads.

My fingers barely touch the flap on the back of the envelope when voices begin to tickle my ears.

I slip the unopened envelope into my backpack and hoist the strap over my shoulder. I turn off my flashlight but keep it in my hand.

My raspy breath echoes through the hallway as I slowly inch back toward the living room. The voices grow louder the closer I get.

Relief ripples through me; the voices are pouring from the old black-and-white TV. Fear returns, though, when I wonder,
Who turned it on?

“Hello?” I croak. “Hello? Mr. Hastings? George?”

But the living room is eerily vacant. The TV flashes images of life as it once was in the apartment. There they are, at the end of the day: Emma with a book in her lap, George twirling the end of his mustache and laughing at his favorite radio show.

The TV's plagued by interference. The image on the screen begins to flip, then turns to black-and-white snow. A crunchy static fills the air, for only a moment, to be replaced
by close-ups of wrinkled, furious faces. George shouts, “I forbid it! No more Nick!” while Emma slams her bedroom door. Through the walls, they continue to scream angrily at each other, their voices as tangled as the wild vines that grow up the theater's bricks.

More black-and-white snow; more static.

The screen fills this time with peaceful images. Emma flashes a mannequin-fake smile; she's pretending she's given up. She kisses George's cheek. Once he's asleep, she sneaks out of the apartment, heading downstairs. Nick is waiting for her on the stage in the theater below.

The TV goes black, but the footsteps still echo. They're coming from the stairs now, growing fainter and farther away.

“Emma?” I whisper.

I hurry out of the apartment. “Emma?” I try again, my whisper echoing against the staircase.

Silence.

I race down the stairs, through the backstage area.

I'm back in the lobby. Alone.

Until voices spill from the auditorium.

Cass and Dylan are here.

“W
hat are we going to do?” Dylan asks.

He's center stage, sitting cross-legged, his shoulders slumped forward. And Cass is pacing. The theater is midnight dark—the only light in the entire room comes from a spotlight that's popped to life, shining down from the ancient rigging. It creates a white circle of light on the wooden stage.

“I don't know,” Cass says. She's walking in a circle over and over, tracing the outline of the spotlight. “Everything would be different if we could do our musical in here.”

Dylan brings himself to his feet and reaches for her.

It was intended to be a brief moment of comfort—an
it's okay; we'll get through it
.

But the instant his hand touches her arm, it becomes far
more. They don't so much embrace as curl into each other. Cass tucks her head beneath Dylan's chin, resting her smooth, peach-colored cheek against the base of his perfect throat. Each time their skin touches, a tiny burst of sparks flies into the air.

This has never happened before. Dancing—yes. Hand-holding—yes. Creating music together—yes. But not this. Not wrapping their arms around each other, pressing themselves against each other so tightly that they appear more like two strokes of a pen—two curlicues making up the same cursive letter—than they do two different people. They wrap their arms tighter around each other, finally admitting that this has been the stuff of fantasy for both of them.

There's no interest in rushing the moment. They linger—Dylan puts his hand gently on the top of Cass's head, starts to bury his nose in her hair.

But Cass tilts her head back. She catches his eye.

I can feel it—the not-enough of it all. Even though they're the kind of close that means they can feel the warmth radiating from each other's lips.

As Dylan starts to lower his mouth—and I think, with a gasp,
Cass's first kiss
—the entire theater explodes in blinding Technicolor. There is no darkness, only brilliant gilding and vivid red curtains. Instantly, the entire set is new again. Staircases stand tall. The smell of sawdust and paint fills the air,
dancing alongside the electric sensation that a show is about to begin.

But a strange ticking fills my ears—an annoying, persistent countdown clock insists Cass and Dylan can't stay in the theater forever, just as Emma and Nick couldn't. These fleeting moments together under the lights are an intermission from the real world. In the real world, which comes with a strict set of guidelines and rules and restrictions, “limitless” is more of a metaphor than a word used literally.

No—here, during intermission, there are no limits. The truly impossible can take place. Here, during intermission, Cass and Dylan loom far larger than their physical bodies would have ever allowed. In here, they are CinemaScope. A symphony swells out of nowhere, playing a sweeping love overture. A summer breeze trickles across my face, carrying the smell of wildflowers that bloomed more than a half century ago, for Emma and Nick. Fireflies flash through the darkness. Stars blink across the ceiling, forming an X.

And because anything is possible, even the persistent ticking no longer sounds like a clock, but like the running of an old-fashioned projector.

Stars begin to slide away from each other. Bertie predicted this. Cass and Dylan—mirror images of Emma and Nick—have taken up where the couple from the past left off. They're the ones who are responsible for moving those
stars—uncrossing them. Righting the tragedy of Emma and Nick.
This is it. . . .

I hold my breath as Dylan's mouth hovers over Cass's. I feel I'm intruding, but I can't take my eyes off the stage. I lean forward, in anticipation of an utter explosion of magic—like nothing any of us has seen yet.

Instead, the door to the alley flies open with a bang. Cass and Dylan gasp, pulling away from each other. Fireflies stop dancing; the smell of wildflowers is replaced with the smell of dust and mildew. The stage returns to its shabby self.

Above, the stars slide back into a giant X.

“Wh-wh-wh—?” Dylan stutters.

Cass's face shines in the spotlight; her birthmark is back. Her hand flies to her face. She knows it's back.

I slip down behind a row of seats. Has someone reported us for trespassing?

The stars fade. The spotlight dies.

“Hello?” a voice cries out. “Hello?”

I should know that voice. Moonlight spills from the alley into the dark theater, illuminating the small silhouette.

George?
No—not George. The voice is female.

“I know you're in here. I've been watching.”

It's Kiki. And she's ruining everything.

I close my eyes, hoping that when I open them again, Kiki will be gone, and Cass and Dylan will be able to recapture the magic. I hear Mom's bedtime-story voice: “They were torn
apart, Romeo and Juliet, by outside forces—their families didn't want them to be together. Just like George was afraid that Emma would run off with Nick! He pulled them apart, too! Yes! It's all the same, don't you see?”

But when I open my eyes, nothing's changed. The theater's dark and silent and scary. No Technicolor. No CinemaScope. It's happened with Cass and Dylan, too—the outside world has encroached. And Kiki's the one who's let that outside world in. She's letting it tear two hearts apart.

“Hello?” Kiki tries again. This time, even from a distance, I can tell she's trembling. She's uninvited and unwanted.

Cass and Dylan stand quietly—close to each other, but no longer together. They back up. They're hurrying away from the stage in opposite directions.

“Don't think I can't hear you running around in here,” Kiki shouts, her voice echoing. “Hello? I know you're in here. Cass! Dylan!

“Hello?” she cries out again, crossing her arms over her chest protectively.

She tries to take a step forward but waves her hands in front of her face, lets out a bunch of spurts. In the moonlight streaming from the still-open alley door, I can see that a wall of cobwebs has lowered, forming a barrier.

She takes a step to the side, moving completely out of the moonlight.

I can't see her, but I can hear her shuffling.

Around me, though, the Avery groans and creaks back at her, in complete dissatisfaction. Groans like the old, arthritic woman she is, angry that her home has been disrupted, intruded upon. The smells of dust and rot and wet decay explode.

A scurry of small feet across the floor and a squeak are followed closely by Kiki's horrified shriek. I've never encountered any kind of rodent inside the theater—never seen so much as an ant—but a rat apparently just skittered across Kiki's feet.

I hear a deep, throaty inhale. Feel a waft of muggy air across my face. The Avery is sighing in annoyance, telling Kiki,
Give it up. I'm not letting you in. You're not welcome. You're not the right heart. And you are not here for the right reason.

As punctuation, a board slips from the ceiling and clatters to the floor. Kiki's trespassing—Cass and Dylan are the welcome ones. The Avery is letting Kiki know it.

After another threatening groan from the theater, Kiki lets out a final yelp and lunges through the back door, into the alley.

I pull myself to my feet and drag myself down the center aisle. After Kiki's intrusion, the theater smells old. It smells like disappointment. It smells like the real world.

Cass and Dylan are nowhere in sight by the time the alley door shuts behind me. As I cross the square, heading for home, I look back over my shoulder.

The Avery remains dark, its corners concealed by overgrown, half-dead vines and shrubs. Windows are cracked. Bricks are still spray-painted STAY OUT! and No Trespassing!! All of it hiding the magic I know is still locked inside. Protected from uninvited meddlers.