Starry-Eyed (28 page)

I dug my fingernails into the apple peel. “Mr. Giatti asked me to do the costumes. I'll say yes.”

“I know you will.”

“It's better than nothing.” I rolled onto my elbows, picturing the stage filled with plywood pillars and silk palm trees. I grinned at Liam. “It might even be fun. I'll put the choir boys in poufy harem pants and spangly—”

A crackling sound filled the auditorium. A moment later, a voice from the loudspeaker echoed through the room.

“Good afternoon, students,” said Principal Barryman. I could hear pockets of dwindling sound from the hallways outside, the noise of other conversations rapidly fading.

“I'd like to take this chance to speak to you without interrupting class time,” the principal went on. “All of us are upset today by the news about junior class member Mara Crane. I think I can rely on everyone in this school to do what they can for the Crane family, and for Mara herself, at this difficult time. The police are also depending on your cooperation, so if you know anything about Mara's whereabouts this weekend, please let someone know. And remember that our school counselors are always available if you need to talk.

“Finally, students . . . be cautious out there. Don't walk home alone. Stay in well-lighted, well-trafficked areas. Let someone know where you are and where you're going—a friend, a parent, a teacher. Let's all take care of each other.”

There was a click, and the loudspeakers switched off.

Liam and I sat for a few more minutes in our patch of electric sunlight. Then I tossed my half-eaten apple back into its paper bag, Liam swallowed his sandwich crust, and we plodded together up the aisle, back into the real world.

. . . . .

I walked home alone.

I always do. Liam lives several miles away, my younger brother has football practice after junior high (and he would rather be dead than seen with me, anyway), and people don't tend to mess with the girl with black hair, black coat, and studded leather bracelets. Getting dressed every day can be like putting on a costume. I've been playing the role of brooding girl in black for years.

Besides, my mom knew where I was. Or I guess I should say my mom was
vaguely aware
of where I was. With her new job, and the house, and Kyle's football games, she's generally got too much on her mind to clear a spot for me.

The early December wind pushed little snowdrifts across the pavement, and I crunched through them, tonguing the broken spot in my mouth.

Alone inside the house, I grabbed a bag of stale tortilla chips from the half-empty cupboard and flopped down in front of the television. I had to chew with only my back teeth, which felt weird. I broke the chips into little pieces to fit them past the sore spot.

Every single local station was obsessing over Mara Crane's disappearance. Channel 6 had sent some poor, shivering reporter to stand in front of the Cranes' house, the huge white Colonial I remembered from when Mara and I were kids. The reporter was trying to look serious and sympathetic, but she was obviously more concerned about what the wind was doing to her hair. Every now and then, photos that had run in the local newspapers took the reporter's place on the screen. Mara in her Queen Guenevere costume. Mara with the rest of her dance troupe, her skin sparkling with little beads of postshow sweat. Mara after a concert, clutching a massive bouquet of white roses. Each picture was like an open safety pin.
Look how special she is
, they said, digging into my skin.
Look how pretty. How full of promise
.

On Channel 11, the Lincoln Grove police chief was speaking into a cluster of microphones. “. . . No signs of foul play, but we're not ruling anything
out,” he was saying, as another reporter shoved a microphone toward his bushy mustache. “We would like to ask all members of the community, and the young people especially, to be cautious.”

Even on Channel 14, which broadcast from Chicago, a perky blonde anchor was interviewing some bald crime expert who looked like he'd been carved out of a bar of moisturizing soap.

“. . . area since 1987,” said the expert, “when ten-year-old Lucy Porter disappeared during her walk home from a neighborhood park.” A photo of a smiling, dark-skinned girl with long-lashed eyes flashed across the screen. “In the metro area, of course, there are many more cases of this type, but—”

“The circumstances would lead you to think that this was an abduction, then?” the anchor interrupted.

The gleam on the expert's scalp flashed back and forth as he tilted his head. “Well, they aren't consistent with most runaway cases. Additionally, just over a year ago, eighteen-year-old Peter Rostek disappeared under similar circumstances.” A school photo of a boy with a chiseled jaw and wavy black hair floated in the TV's ray. “His family thought he was in bed for the night, but in the morning, his room was empty. Of course, that was in Carter, Illinois, a substantial distance from Lincoln Grove, but—”

I switched the TV off. Without it, the house was too quiet. I could almost hear the walls creaking as they leaned farther and farther away from me, and my own body felt strangely small. If I wasn't here—if I left right now, or if anything happened to me—no one would know. It would be hours before anyone even noticed I was gone.

I turned the television back on and flipped to the rock music channel, cranking up the volume. Then I headed to the kitchen for a cup of instant hazelnut latte, leaving the song to scream at an empty room.

. . . . .

That Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of students from Lincoln Grove High joined a volunteer brigade searching all of the nearby parks. No one found anything.

On Thursday evening, there was a candlelight vigil in the school parking lot. Liam and I went because anyone who didn't looked like a sociopath. We spent most of the time sitting side by side on a frosty cement divider, playing word games on his phone.

The next week, my mother got paid, and the dentist patched a big blob of enamel onto my front tooth.

The week after that, Mr. Giatti gave Mara's role in
Kismet
to a girl named Hailey, and three seniors got caught huffing glue in the shop.

In January, the school basketball team won at regionals, and Lincoln Grove lost its collective mind.

Mara's missing posters, which still hung on every bulletin board and telephone pole in town, grew worn and faded. Other, fresher fliers began to encroach on their edges, so that only Mara's face could be seen, smiling out at you from between the overlapping strips of weathered paper. And then, in February, the Camino Real Theatre Company went on tour.

. . . . .

You wouldn't expect a touring theater company to get a lot of attention at a crummy high school in a dying factory town like Lincoln Grove. But it did.

Maybe it was because Lincoln Grove was the kind of town where chances like this didn't come along very often. Maybe it was the posters, which popped up overnight like black and silver mushrooms along the high school halls, blaring things like:
YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN A SHOW LIKE THIS
, and
TOKYO, MOSCOW, BERLIN, PARIS, LONDON, NEW YORK
,
CHICAGO: ONE NIGHT ONLY
, and
DAZZLING—MAGICAL—TERRI-FYING
. Or maybe it was because the English department was offering extra credit and a free ride to Chicago to anyone who wanted to go.

I had exactly forty-nine dollars in my savings account. More than enough for the ticket. Enough not to have to ask Mom for it.

On the night of the show, Liam and I met up early in the school parking lot so we could grab a seat together in the back of the huge charter bus.

The ride to Chicago was flat and long, with snow-covered fields spread like dirty sheets on either side of the highway. By the time we reached the city, the sun had set, and the buildings were glittering hunks of electrified stone.

We were rumbling through the tight streets of downtown when Liam said, “It's weird to think I'll be living here soon.”

I whirled toward him. “What?”

“I'm applying to DePaul.”

I felt a prickle of ice deep in my chest. “Really?”

Liam nodded. “If I get a partial scholarship, my parents think they can cover the rest.” He glanced at me. “You could apply. It's an amazing theater program.”

I snorted. “Even if I was accepted . . .”

Liam waited for a second, watching me. “What? Is it the money?”

“You know it is.”

Both of us went quiet. I slumped in my seat, scraping streaks of black polish off of my nails, until we pulled up in front of the theater.

The second the bus squealed to a stop, half the seniors bolted out the doors and ran into the streets, laughing. Three free hours in Chicago.

“More seats for us to choose from,” Liam muttered into my ear.

Tuxedoed ushers hustled us through the marble lobby. We climbed curving stairs to the balcony doors. Liam picked our spot: in the center, near the front rail. I stared from the huge blue velvet curtain of the stage to the chandeliers hanging from the frescoed ceiling, and felt suddenly, pathetically small.

I slouched down next to Liam and studied the program.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
, said the
cover, in the same black and silver script as the posters. Inside, the program was almost empty. There were no cast lists, no actor bios. Just a scene-by-scene synopsis.

“Weird,” I whispered, leaning over the armrest.

“Minimalist,” Liam whispered back.

The remaining seats filled with city people in dark colors, suburban couples in heavy winter coats, old people with cough drops. At last the chandeliers began to dim, and I got that same feeling I always get just before a show begins: that prickling in the center of my chest that rushes out to the tips of my body, tingling in my fingers, flooding my toes. I've heard people talk about out-of-body experiences—the kind you have after life-threatening accidents or illnesses, when you float up out of yourself and look down at the world, and you suddenly see everything in a wider, clearer, luminous way. I've never come that close to dying. But I know what it's like to float out of my body. I feel it every time the houselights dim.

A hush spread through the theater. The curtain rustled open. Center stage, a huge fountain with three illuminated tiers seemed to spout actual water.

“Wow,” I whispered.

“Light trick,” Liam whispered back, but there was a tiny frown on his face. Glints of water reflected in the lenses of his glasses.

There was a rumble of music, and the actors entered.

It sounds stupid to say that they were good, even though they were. They were good in a way that made them disappear: they were part of the language, part of the set, part of the illusion. Maybe that was why no one noticed anything strange about them. Not at first.

Besides, we're all so used to seeing actors up close, on TV or in the movies, with cameras focused so tight on their faces that you can count every pore and nostril hair. In a theater, sometimes you can't see the actors' faces at all. And when you can't see someone's face, when you watch someone from far away, what you see isn't what they look like. You see how they move, how they hold themselves; you listen closely to their
voices. The rest is an illusion. I know all this—I've watched enough shows from the light booth or the wings to know that you can brush past the actors backstage afterward, with all their insane greasy makeup and Aqua-Netted hair, and not recognize a single one of them. And still, through the makeup and the lights and the distance, I started to think there was something familiar about the actor playing Quince.

“Have you seen that guy in anything else?” I hissed at Liam. “Maybe on TV?”

Liam squinted at the stage for a minute. He shook his head.

I turned my eyes back to the stage too, searching the actors' painted faces. It wasn't just Quince. Several of them looked vaguely familiar. Maybe that was the secret of the Camino Real Theatre Company. Maybe they were all movie stars, carefully costumed and made up so that audiences couldn't quite be sure.

The first act ended. The curtain didn't close. This was where the crew should have darted out in their black clothes and headsets, moving the set pieces around, performing their invisible dance. Instead, a burst of fog billowed across the stage. Dry ice makes a thick, low-rolling swamp, great for creating atmosphere without smoking up the whole stage. But this didn't look like dry ice. This mist swirled up in tendrils of white, forming weird, twisted columns, spiraling and somersaulting, swathes of it soaring into the fly space like gigantic wings.

Quince's house vanished into the fog.

At the same moment, a forest of trees seemed to sprout up from the stage itself, their trunks swelling and branches unfurling, their limbs shimmering and solid in the pale stage lights. The buzz from the audience got louder.

“Whoa,” I breathed. “How did they do that? Trapdoors?”

“All over the stage?” Liam shook his head. “It must be a projector or something.” He craned over the back of his seat, looking for the light booth. I followed his eyes, but I didn't see what Liam was looking for. A few seconds later, he turned around, his frown growing deeper.