Spark (14 page)

T
he ring tone's off, allowing for an enormous sigh of relief to mingle with the dust particles floating around my head. But I tense up again, wondering
Who could possibly need me?
as I scramble after the phone. When I check to see who's called, I find that its screen has come alive and a new black-and-white scene is playing.

I'm staring at the Avery of old. “OPENING NIGHT” is blazing across its marquee. It appears everyone in town is arriving—a bunch of round-fendered cars are fighting for parking spaces. Men in their finest pressed suits and women in gorgeous new hats are filing down the front walk, toward the entrance.

Once inside, they find their seats; the entire theater buzzes
with excitement as the orchestra tunes up.

The lights fall.

I can see him in the pit. Nick. He raises his hands, places them on the keys.

This is it.

I hold my breath. And keep holding.

Emma misses her cue. She isn't standing on the deck of the ship, beneath the stoplight. In fact, she isn't on the stage at all.

“Come on,” Nick whispers, as though hoping he can make her instantly appear. “Come on.”

She bursts out, her feet clomping awkwardly across the deck. And pauses. The introductory measures of “All Through the Night” hit the air and die. The only part of her that moves is her mouth, but nothing's coming out. She licks her lips repeatedly, in a way that says her mouth is as dry as clothes left out on the line in a windstorm.

Now what?

Her breath quickens as she stares out into the darkened theater. The introductory measures of her song hit the air a second time. The music falters as she stands frozen, her mouth clamped shut. The first line continues to elude her.

Nervous rustling ripples up from the crowd—chairs squeaking. A cough.

She cringes as though the spotlight has begun to burn.

Emma—the valedictorian, successful at everything she's ever put her mind to—is screwing up. As she's never screwed up anything in her life. Whispers filter from the crowd, followed by a satisfied snicker. It sounds as though someone in the audience is announcing,
Finally, finally, here's something she can't do. Little Miss Valedictorian—how smart does she feel now?

“Don't let them get to you,” Nick murmurs. “Just keep moving. Keep moving, keep moving.”

From the pit, a few piano notes. The introductory measures of her song. The notes twist, bending into a strangely off, almost minor-sounding chord. A mistake, it seems at first. Only, that minor sound begins to bend, beneath the addition of other notes, into another chord.

Nick's reminding her, “I've got you. . . .”

Emma squares her shoulders, juts her head forward. She nods—she's heard him.

She releases a few notes of her own, a few lyrics. The entire orchestra kicks in—but the piano sings out over all the rest of the instruments. His piano—Nick—is carrying her.

Nick leans into the small light poised on top of the piano, allowing Emma to see him. Emma's voice grows louder beneath his support. He presses the keys more forcefully, pushing her to belt her lyrics.
You can do this,
his chords insist. She believes him; the strength that was missing when she first appeared onstage washes across her face.

The scene on my phone fades to black, then comes back to life again. Now I'm staring at the front of the Avery. The square is quiet. Summer fireflies pop on the green space near the front walk, dance over the pavement, bounce between cars toward the alley. And my screen is following them.

The back door of the theater bursts open. Emma lurches into the moonlit alley, struggling to catch her breath. Nick follows close behind.

I can still hear the applause. It's pouring out the open door. And Emma is laughing. “We did it.” She sighs with relief.

Nick pushes the wisps of her hair back from her face and wraps her in his arms.

Surprise washes across her face. Emma's no longer staring at a magazine imagining what it must feel like to be held by a man; she's actually
in a man's arms
. Nick smiles broadly, relishing the trusting weight of Emma's body pressing against him.

Nick's face lowers slowly. As their lips meet, a soft glow begins to emanate from the space around their heads.

This is no mere spark, as I saw snap between them when they met. This is no mere soft glow on the distant horizon. As their kiss lingers, the entire sky above warms to a yellow-green hue. The stars grow closer, joining together above them.

There's something magical about this kiss. It's no shy first kiss, not like the awful thing I shared with Matt Fredericks during the seventh-grade field trip. It's the kiss that brightens
the sky and shifts the night wind, blowing discarded candy wrappers and programs underfoot.

“Emma!” George's muffled voice shouts from somewhere deep inside the Avery. “Where are you?”

Nick pulls his mouth away. Yellow-green swirls instantly fade from the night sky.

A single tear trails down Emma's cheek.

“What is it?” Nick asks. “What's the matter?”

“It feels like everything's already been plotted out for us. In two more weeks, the play closes. You'll pack up your sheet music, step away from the Avery's orchestra, and head to the train depot. By the end of the summer, I'll be gone, too. Gone to college out east.”

“But Emma—”

“It doesn't even feel like real life, somehow. You and me. It feels like a break from real life. Like—intermission. A little space between Act I and Act II, Childhood and Adulthood.”

“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.

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 thought 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
whoosh
es as Dylan steps outside, waiting for us on the sidewalk.