Spark (7 page)

“Why didn't you tell me sooner?” Emma glances down at her baggy coveralls. She rubs her greasy hands even harder. “I should clean up. Change.”

“No need for all that,” George tells her. “Everyone's starting to arrive.”

Emma whimpers pitifully as her father drags her down
the front walk. They stand at the door, greeting the Verona players.

On the far side of the square, Emma sees them: Nick and Dahlia. “Who—” she starts.

“I sent Dahlia to the station to get our new piano player,” George answers.

“You did what? Sent a little girl to get him? And he's coming now? Today? And I look like this?”

“Oh, Emma. Don't make a fuss.”

“Don't you think a professional musician expects to be treated as a professional?” That time, her voice borders on sounding like a growl.

“No need to make this a bigger deal than it is.”

Emma pushes her glasses back up onto her face, leaving a smear of grease behind. “What's the poor guy's name, anyway?”

“Nick, I believe.”

“Nick,” she mutters. “Poor Nick.”

“Don't you think that a musician who's just accepted his first paying gig might feel a tad bit nervous? And don't you think that young man might also want something—anything—to calm those nerves?”

Emma nods, her face relaxing into the tiniest smile. “Nothing as disarming as a child.”

“Your old man might have a few tricks up his sleeve,” George says, offering her a wink.

Emma leans toward her father to confess, “I hadn't expected someone so young. He looks my age.”

“Yes.” George frowns. “Awfully young.”

Dahlia pushes Nick down the front walk, straight toward George and Emma. “Hey, George! I brought 'im. Told you I could do it. You can always count on me.”

She sticks her stomach out and smooths a sunset-pink cloth dahlia into the sash of her blue plaid dress. “I'm good at lots of things. See how pretty the flower still looks? After being around all the smoke from the train even!”

“I never had any doubts about Nick. And you're doing quite an impressive job there, too,” George praises, pointing at the cloth flower.

I smile from my auditorium seat, instantly remembering how Mom had often laughed, telling me (usually around the time of her birthday) about how much she hated being little. How being a child was something she couldn't wait to kick off—like shoes that pinched. How she hated the way her mother slapped her hands when she reached for the grown-up lady stuff in Hattie's: white gloves (which her mother always said she dirtied too quickly), or purses (which her mother liked to remind her she lost less than ten minutes after slipping a strap over her shoulder), or hats (which her mother claimed always came back from Dahlia's outings looking like a herd of elephants had trampled on them).

“This flower came from a real grown woman's hat,”
Dahlia informs Emma, who's staring at the new musician and still trying to wipe her hands clean. “Mom didn't want me to have it. She said I'd mess it up. But that's what she knows. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of grown-up things. I'll show her. I'll keep the flower clean and perfect. I'm very grown-up. Just watch. I promised her. Isn't that what grown-ups do? They make promises. And keep them.”

Emma chuckles halfheartedly. She sucks in a deep breath, bringing her eyes to meet Nick's.

At that moment, I'm seeing them as they really were. Not as the newspaper clipping or Mom's old bedtime stories described them. I'm seeing them as real people, flaws and all: Nick with his pale, sweaty face, his wheezing shortness of breath. Emma with her dirty coveralls and her greasy face and her big glasses, twittering in her gawky way.

As Nick takes a step closer, Emma shoves her
Love Fiction Monthly
even deeper into her pocket.

Across the square, Bertie clutches her journal and points at the sky. “Talking,” she insists. She turns to look directly through the screen—right at me. I shiver, straightening my back. My eyes swell. “The skies are talking,” Bertie goes on, “just like I'm talking to you. Right now. And they're telling me what's going to happen. I know what's about to go on. Just watch. You'll see it, too.”

As she turns and races toward the Avery, the bustling square leaves a giant circle of space around her. No one even
glances toward the young girl they refer to as Crazy Bertie. She's invisible.

Nick leans forward, offering George his sweaty palm. They shake while Dahlia continues to smooth her cloth flower.

“Look!” Bertie shouts at me as Nick offers his hand to Emma, who is raising her own dirty hand apologetically. “Don't take your eyes off the screen!”

At the moment their skin touches, a white electric flash zips between their fingertips.

A spark.

T
he projector stops ticking behind me. The curtains fall across the front of the stage at the same moment that the screen goes black.

I want another scene. Want this to be simply another changing reel. I stay glued to my chair, staring at the front of the theater, begging silently for the screen to come back to life.

One last muggy breeze—an exhale from the Avery—drags itself across my skin.

The Avery's heart stops beating. Silence attacks my ears.

“Hello?” I try.

No answer. The Avery is still, dark, and empty.

I flick my flashlight back on. The curtains are no longer pulled; instead, the old
Anything Goes
set is once again center stage.

I stand, make my way back into the pit, then toward the steps along the side of the stage. The light from my flashlight bounces about as I climb. The set now appears to be in far worse shape than it was when I walked in. One of the short staircases in the set has collapsed; it's on its side. The platform that represents the deck of the ship has toppled, too, and is left standing at a forty-five-degree angle.

“Did this happen on the stage?” Bertie always asks in Dahlia's bedtime story.

“Yes,” Dahlia always whispers.

I shiver at the stark scene, illuminated only by the beam of my flashlight—the site where Nick and Emma died. Though the set suddenly appears to be ravaged by time, the emotions here are as raw as ever, locked in the air above the stage. I can feel it all: desperation for love, fear of being found, final pain. I can hear Dahlia's screams. George's footsteps as he raced for help.

Overcome by my own emotions, my footsteps begin to thunder, too. I'm racing, trying to get away. The minute I hit the alley, the back door slams behind me. I hurry through the tranquil night, toward the center of the square. The front of the Avery is dark.

Stars start slipping across the sky. Flittering as though propelled by wings.

I shudder as the stars settle in a clump. One at a time, they move, arranging themselves like game pieces. Forming a large X.

“Star-crossed,” I mutter.

But who are the stars talking about? Emma and Nick? Or a pair of someones who have not yet met their fate?

“Who?” I ask, my face still turned skyward.

In response, a single yellow-green flame rises from the horizon, streaking through the sky like the stroke made by an invisible pen.

The streak slowly fades; the black sky returns. The stars twinkle, no longer arranged in any order.

Still, though, the skies are talking—like Bertie always said they did. They're telling a story.

And right now, I'm the only one who really knows they are—like Bertie was the only one who heard it all those years ago.

Starting now, it's up to me to figure out what the skies are trying to say.

M
y Avery encounter leads to a fitful night—technically, by the time I get back home, it's already tomorrow, already an a.m. Sleep must finally knock me out shortly before dawn, though. Because when my alarm goes off, my eyes fly open to find the apartment strangely still. No Mom—I've slept straight through her usual dressing and cooking and rushing around. The only explanation for where she's gone is a note taped to the fridge: “Errand. See you in class! Oatmeal on the stove!”

I chuckle. In Mom's world, no school day is allowed to begin without oats. Not some crummy cereal, which is in no way a proper breakfast. Oats. Two strips of bacon. OJ. Without fail. Seems strange, though, that something as boring and common as oatmeal could still be part of daily life. Especially after what
I've witnessed: a movie that was never actually filmed playing out on a screen in a theater that has not had a projectionist inside it for more than half a century, and stars realigning themselves, and the heart of the Avery beating again.

But the entire morning is filled with just that—ordinariness. Even in this magical world, there are still inane things like wrinkles in T-shirts. And a widow's peak that refuses to lie down in any styleable way. And carpooling, which means it's my turn to go get Cass. Same old Monday-Wednesday-Fridayness. A clicking seat belt and turn signals and a really old 2000 Mercury Sable that never starts the first time I crank the ignition. I struggle to get the car to kick over as the Avery looms in my rearview.

Instead of driving straight to Cass's place, I take a slight detour down a side street, toward the old train depot that's shouting distance from the square. Closed for more than three decades, it now looks like another part of the ghost town that Verona is becoming, with crumbling concrete steps and rusted railings. Weather has stripped all the paint from the main building, exposing the wood beneath—in some places, boards are sun bleached nearly white, and in others they're black with rot. The adjoining Verona Hotel is likewise falling apart. Its Fred Harvey restaurant sign, with the bright, white, cursive letters that had once welcomed hungry travelers and souvenir hunters, now screeches in the wind, rusted and nearly illegible.

I close my eyes, reliving last night's movie in the Avery.
Listening to the excited shouts of travelers embarking on new journeys, eager to escape the humdrum.

I crack my eyes back open again. The coldness of decay causes me to shiver.

The dashboard clock tells me I'm running behind. I sigh, turning the car around. Cass will start texting soon:
Where r u???

The Montgomery house is the polar opposite of the tiny, above-Potions apartment. The thing's enormous—their basement even has a small kitchen off to the side of an entertainment area, complete with a pool table and wide-screen TV. It seems like they live in two houses—one stacked on top of the other. So much space for three people. One of these days, I'm going to ask Cass if she ever winds up walking around aimlessly, going from room to room, unable to find her parents, like some kid separated from her folks at a shopping mall.

I take a shortcut down the old highway that runs parallel to the interstate, where there's no danger of being pulled over for allowing the gas pedal to do a little making out with the floorboard. Ten minutes later I'm ringing the bell; her mother's swinging the door open. She's wearing her daily accessory: a corsage, pinned to the left side of a short-sleeved powder-blue blouse. Which probably seems a little nuts for any random, not-special weekday morning—at least, for anyone other than a florist. She has her black leather hobo bag
slung over her shoulder and keys in her hand. “Good. You're here. She's having a bit of a wardrobe meltdown this morning. Go tell her whatever she's wearing is great, will you? You'll both be late—like I'm about to be.”

She waves and scurries down the front walk, trailing the sweet smell of roses.

I race through the thirty or so miles of house, heading up to Cass's room.

If I were practicing analogies for the old SATs, I'd have to say that books are to my room what vinyl albums are to Cass's. She's created her own shelving out of old plastic milk crates and has filled them all with vintage Broadway cast recordings. The albums completely conceal the walls; I know her bedroom's purple, but only because I was with Cass when she chose the paint color from a hardware store sample. By now, not an inch of the paint remains in view. I figure her stacks of vinyl will someday even wind up covering the windows.

This morning she's playing her
Rocky Horror Picture Show
soundtrack—“The Time Warp” blares through her speakers. Her enormous Labrador-bloodhound mix, Jerry Orbach, snores from the middle of her bed. Only Jerry could snooze through the ear-splitting chorus. He's grown up listening to Cass's seven-million-decibel soundtracks—usually while Cass belts out the lyrics herself. It always seems like he's trained himself to tune it all out, the same way he's been trained to bark at the back door when he needs to go out.

“The Time Warp,” though, is a strange morning choice. I wonder—did something happen to her last night, too?

When she sees me, Cass lifts the needle from the spinning album. “Hey,” she greets me. “'Bout time.”

“Your mom said you were in need of a personal stylist intervention. Don't look it, though. That's cute,” I say, pointing at her denim capri pants with the thick cuffs, the white round-necked shirt with ruching along the sides, and sleeves that come down just below the elbows. It has a decided sixties vibe going for it.

“I'm trying to find a scarf. . . .” Her voice trails as she squats and starts to rifle through a storage container of vintage scarves, sending flashes of color flying.

Named after the Broadway star, Jerry Orbach lets out a throaty groan as I sit on the bed next to him. He's beginning to get a little gray, like the real-life Jerry Orbach, who shows up in late-night cable airings of
Dirty Dancing
and
Law & Order
. He lifts his front paw, inviting me to rub his belly.

As I scratch—and as Cass digs through her scarves—I'm dying to bring up yesterday afternoon. But I have no idea how to even begin. Do I tell her that I saw her on the steps? That I heard her out there singing?

Jerry Orbach rolls, exposing an album he's been sleeping on:
The Fantasticks.
I smile, wrenching it out from under him. At first, I just think it's funny. Jerry Orbach lying on a picture of—you know. Jerry Orbach. Who was in the original
Fantasticks
cast. But then I realize this is my in. “Isn't this show kind of a take-off on
Romeo and Juliet
?” I hold my breath, waiting for her answer.

She glances over her shoulder. “Sort of. The parents want their kids to get together, so they figure if they act like they're feuding and don't want them to, they will. Kind of reverse star-crossing.”

My stomach does one of those flips it performs when I'm going way too fast over the top curve of a hill. “What'd you say?”

“You know—Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed lovers. Outside forces were in their way. So it's set up to make it look like those kids are star-crossed—so they'll fall in love . . . kinda like reverse psychology. But with star-crossing.”

I stare into Jerry Orbach's gray snout and brown eyes. I swear he raises an eyebrow.

“Do you ever think about what it's like?” I ask, swiveling my eyes back to the front of the album.

“What what's like?”

“Being with somebody. A couple. You know—a love story.”

Cass shrugs. “What for?”

The way she stiffens up makes me think I'm on to something. “Have you ever kissed anybody yet? That you haven't told me about? Like really kissed?”

Cass pauses. Shakes her head. “Truth or Dare's a little bit
too deep for me this early in the morning.”

“I kissed Matt Fredericks in the seventh grade. We were on that field trip—when you were home sick, remember? We stopped at a Pizza Hut for lunch. It happened by the soda dispenser.”

“What?” Cass looks mortally offended. “You never told me that.”

I shrug. “I never told anybody.”

“Yeah, but you're supposed to tell me everything. You're my best friend. It's in your job description.”

“I think I made the same impression on him as the pair of socks he wore on the second Thursday of March back in the fourth grade. And it was about the same for me.”

Cass laughs, returning to her scarf search.

“I used to think—back when it happened—even though it didn't . . . I used to think it still counted. First kiss—
ca-ching!
” I say, making the sound of a register cashing in.

Cass rolls her eyes. “
Ca-ching
?” She groans.

I ignore her. “A kiss is a kiss, right? Only, now, I kind of think maybe it's not. Maybe a rotten kiss is the same as no kiss at all. What do you think?”

“I dunno,” Cass says quietly. “What's with you, Quin?”

When I just stare, she finally says, “Maybe the best kisses are the ones you imagine. Maybe, if you only imagined kissing Matt Fredericks, it would have been the best kiss of all time. I mean, nobody fantasizes about disappointments, right?
Maybe the best love stories are the ones you make up. Maybe that's why we all go to the movies and read books and listen to the same cheesy love songs over and over. Maybe the best stories are the ones that play out in the theater of your mind.”

My scalp tightens and I stop breathing. The theater of the mind. The magic of the theater. The Avery. This is my chance to say something about her singing yesterday. About how I heard it. About the way the Avery changed. About what I saw last night.

But Cass doesn't give me a chance. She lunges toward a small round radio—one of those space-age-looking things from the seventies—and turns up the volume. “Ooh, have you ever listened to this station? They play really good old stuff.”

I turn my eyes down, toward Jerry Orbach. He has no advice for me.

A song fades, and the DJ begins to blabber. Cass finally finds her scarf. It's covered in cartoon drawings of the Beatles—the way they looked in that
Yellow Submarine
movie. She drapes it over the top of her head and ties the ends together under her left ear. When she finishes, the knot somehow resembles a rose—something I could never manage, not in a hundred years of trying. But now that the knot's tied, she's already reaching for her backpack, and then we'll both be heading out the door. And my opportunity will be completely shot.

“Cass,” I blurt. “Yesterday—”

But I stop midsentence when the DJ announces, “Verona
High's drama teacher, Dahlia Drewery, visited us at the station earlier this morning . . .”

Cass and I both turn to look at her radio as though it's another person in the room. So this is where Mom went. Cass turns it up still louder.

“. . . to inform us that the Verona High Advanced Drama class is putting on a musical in order to raise funds for the renovation of the old Avery Theater. They're doing their own production of
Anything Goes
, which was the last musical ever performed inside the Avery. Tickets are available for preorder, and opening night is set for November twentieth—”

Cass gasps and grimaces like she's gotten her finger slammed in a car door. I know what she's thinking:
Two months?

I put my hand to my head. Dread is heavy.

Jerry Orbach speaks for us when he lets out a high-pitched whimper.