Spark (8 page)

“T
wo months.” The words become one of those electronic ankle bracelets—tight and uncomfortable, following my every move and reminding me with every step that I've been sentenced.

“Two months!” Ms. Drewery shouts in Advanced Drama. When she says it, she somehow makes it sound triumphant, like we've already conquered this thing.

But it makes everybody in the class turn pale and swallow hard and start chewing nervously on their pencil erasers.

“After school!” she exclaims, so excited, sweat's breaking out across the creases in her upper lip. “Your first rehearsal. At the auditorium, three o'clock sharp. I won't be there, but you're in good hands with our director. Quin, swing by the
classroom on your way. I'll have the scripts ready for all of you.”

I sink deep into my chair. I'd like to melt right into the cracks in the tile.

By the time the final bell rings, I get the distinct pleasure of doing the upstream-salmon routine while pushing a metal cart piled high with scripts.

But the auditorium's no better. Oh, sure, when I show up, the doors are propped open in an
all are welcome
way, but as I step inside, it feels like a noose has tightened around my throat. And judging by the strained looks on the faces that turn my way, I'm not the only one who thinks so.

The entire Advanced Drama class is here—but we don't exactly form a cohesive group. Instead, a few are swinging their legs from the edge of the stage. Others are scattered throughout the first few rows. Dylan is leaning into a far wall, where the shadow from the Exit sign falls over him like a disguise. Cass is sitting in the front row as a sign of moral support for me. I park my cart near the footlights, searching for the right way to begin addressing the class. Man—if only I knew a joke or two to break the ice. But then again, in my present state of pure terror, I'd probably forget the punch line.

Liz is sitting next to Cass, still yapping, pulling that whole bad-puppy routine. Yesterday she did something to upset her. And now she's trying desperately to get a pat on
the head.
Yes, Liz, everything is fine.

Kiki's scowling at me from the piano bench in the pit. She lets out a Guinness World Record–length sigh as I clear my throat three times, crack a crooked smile, and clear my throat again.

“Okay,” I finally manage. My eyes land on three boys who are seated together in a row in the middle of the auditorium—all of them in red ball caps. And I realize I don't remember their names. How is that possible? We've been smashed together in drama since our freshman year. How can I ever ask anyone to step up when I don't even remember their name?

“This musical. This—this musical is—”

I have no idea how to finish this sentence.

“Might be nice if we had some scripts,” Kiki grumbles impatiently.

“Yes! You're right. Scripts. Thank you.” I tug the first armload from the cart. But I'm even awkward at something as simple as passing them out—I'm sweating and I'm so nervous, I wind up stepping on two sets of toes and dropping Kiki's copy on the piano keyboard. The poor piano lets out a noise that sounds a bit like a wounded cow.

“What's this thing even about?” It's one of the red ball caps, thumbing through the pages.

“It's about—a boy. Who wants a girl.” I glance over at Cass for some sign that I'm not bungling this quite as badly as I think I am. The way she refuses to meet my eye, staring
instead at the toe of her shoe, offers no comfort. “Familiar, right? I mean—it's—a common—story.”

Then it comes to me. “The title song! You've all heard that before. You know it. It's a classic. Let's get our Hope—”

Cass eyes me in the same way she would if I'd told the entire drama class her biggest secret. Read the most revealing page of her diary. The one she's written in secret code because she's so afraid of the details getting leaked. I'm going to be hearing about this until forever.

“And our musical director,” I say.

Kiki shoots me one more glare—just for good measure—and crosses her arms over her chest as she pulls herself away from the piano.

“We have—the music, if you need it,” I say to Cass. And cringe at my offer. Cass doesn't need the sheet music.

Dylan drags himself across the room. Remembering the scene from the hallway—and the awful way Dylan lobbed an angry “uuu-ggly” at Cass—the class sucks in a collective sharp breath. No one exhales. Or blinks. The auditorium is so quiet, we can all hear the piano bench creak beneath his weight.

I turn toward Cass. Forget Liz—I'm the one with the pleading puppy dog eyes.

Slowly, she forces herself to the stage.

Something will happen, I think. Something is definitely going to happen to turn this mess around. It has to.

Dylan slumps over the keyboard. He tries once to play the opening measure, but he fumbles. Leans in toward the line of music. Squints. Tries a second time.

And pauses.

Cass has missed her cue. Why wouldn't she? It doesn't sound like anything she's ever heard before.

I've made a colossal mistake, forcing them to perform on day one. It's cruel.

But I'm not sure what to do at this point, other than press forward. “It's okay,” I insist, even as the wounded look on Cass's face breaks my heart. “Third time's—you know—”

I wish I could take my words and smash them, sending them flying, bits going every which way.

Dylan's really fidgeting—staring at the ceiling. While Cass is giving me the same evil eye that she should have given Liz yesterday, during the “Dermablend” and “Is it inoperable?” episodes.

Why am I doing this to her?
Cass is standing in front of everyone, her birthmark shining out there in the open for everyone to gawk at. The way she's wearing her scarf means she can't even tilt her head in a way that makes her hair fall over it—she can't cover it, hide it.

Reluctantly, the two begin again. Her voice is supersoft—almost like a singing whisper. Dylan lightens his touch on the keys to allow her to be heard. Startled, Cass belts out the next
line, releasing notes that sound like kicks.

And she's off. Way off. Flat. She overcorrects, goes sharp.

I wish her neck was lined with tuning pegs, and I could reach forward and twist them to make this whole thing right.

I can't, though. Cass's flush of embarrassment is turning her entire face the same deep maroon shade of her port-wine stain. And she's rushing—hurrying just to be done.

Which means that Dylan is playing a completely different measure. “C-c-c-c-aah,” he whispers, trying to get her attention. She glares at him in a
can't you pretend that nothing's wrong here?
way, making his own face turn a matching shade of red. How will he ever manage to be a musical director if he can't tell someone to sing louder or what verse they need to rehearse again? How will this ever work? Why would Ms. Drewery give him a job he can't do? His lips wiggle beneath the weight of the apology he can't get out as Cass's voice breaks.

Right now, I wish my last name was anything else.

The song finally ends. Laughter trickles from the doorway.

A group of kids in choir robes, on their way to their own after-school practice session, has shown up, uninvited, to the auditorium. They're the ones who will breeze through their senior projects by performing their annual spring assembly, filled with all kinds of traditional choral selections. The kids
who are not afraid of microphones and speakers and solos.

They're laughing. Each giggle is a needle digging into my skin.

And I feel like I'm being sucked down a drain. Or maybe that's where I'd prefer to be. Because one of the intruders is aiming his phone. He's recorded this. Laughter will erupt again when the video's uploaded. And people from Lithuania will be asking, in the comments section on YouTube, if Cass has ever heard of Dermablend, or if Dylan has ever tried speech therapy. Or worse—most likely, far worse.

And it's my fault.

Before I can figure out what to say, the choir kids are gone.

The ensuing silence in the auditorium is terrible. Everyone's looking to me, expecting direction. But I have no answers. I only know what the rest of the class knows: this musical is going to be an utter fiasco.

“Why don't we all go home and study the script,” I plead.

Wooden seats flap up as everyone begins to file out.

“H-h-here,” Dylan says, standing and holding a copy of sheet music toward Cass. Even though she's just been singing the lyrics by heart. He's reaching out to her—like a man in some old-fashioned movie offering a handkerchief to a distraught young woman.

That sheet music's a peace offering of sorts. Even though he's not the one to blame. I am. His offer only makes me feel worse.

Cass sniffs, and I know she's fighting a flood of tears, but she leans forward to accept.

As the sheet music slides out of his hand and into hers, I see it.

A spark.

A
spark. I tremble; my lips are suddenly melted together. A spark. Like I'd seen between Emma and Nick.

Cass and Dylan flinch; their eyes swell a moment. Cass opens her mouth to say something, but she only turns, grabs her backpack, and races for the exit.

I hurry to catch up. “Cass,” I call, finally able to make my mouth work.

But she doesn't hear. She marches forward, stopping at the passenger side of my car, waiting for me to unlock the door. She's wearing such a shell-shocked expression, she doesn't even look much like herself.

I climb behind the wheel. “In there. With Dylan. Did you feel—”

“Mortified? Like dying?” she finishes.

No, actually. That wasn't what I meant at all. That spark wasn't static. It was far more. I know it.
What did the magic feel like?
I want to ask.
When it zipped between you? Was it a bolt of lightning? Was it warm? Did the world look different at that moment?

“But the way you played together—” I try again.

“—was the worst thing ever,” she groans.

I chew on my lip. Magic, I think, is not something that can be discussed properly in the front seat of a Mercury. We need time to get into this. “You're coming over, aren't you?”

“I've got to walk Jerry Orbach,” she mumbles.

I steer toward her house, but even in the driveway, I'm still trying to convince her. “Come on,” I say. “Just come over. Bring Jer.”

“Really, Quin. It's not you. I don't think I can look your mom in the eye right now. What happened today isn't at all what she had in mind when she gave me the lead.”

She pops the door and starts to run up the drive. Not exactly the laughter and the hug that we shared yesterday outside of Duds.

“Cass!”

She pivots, retreating to stick her face in the rolled-down window. This time I see it—her birthmark.

“I'm so sorry,” I say. “About today.”

“What for? You were just doing your job.”

“But if I hadn't asked you to sing—”

“You couldn't have known some choir jerk was going to show up. Forget it. I'll see you mañana.”

I don't even have a chance to tease her about her Spanish class. (Come on—who takes Spanish I senior year? Seriously? What's the point?) She's too quick about racing for her front door.

Still trying to show she's okay about said choir jerk, she waves before dipping through the front doorway of her enormous house.

I feel terrible. Period. Partly because I know Cass is worried about what's going to come of that embarrassing video, and partly because it's my place to fix it. Step up. Become a real director. Get this entire production under control. There's nothing to make fun of anymore if we wind up knocking everyone's proverbial socks off.

Only, in real life, the worst, most bumbling baseball team on the planet—full of legally blind butterfingers—does not go to the World Series and win. Ever. That's the silly stuff of late-night movies.

At home, I drag myself upstairs and through the apartment—which, without Mom, feels as still as a sleeping cat. In my room, I toss my backpack onto the floor. Feel like tying my own copy of the script to a wad of explosives, actually.

Until my eyes land on the Lilly Daché box, still sitting on my nightstand. I carry the box to my bed, shake off the lid, and mindlessly sift through the contents. Nothing new.
Smiling black-and-whites. Headlines I've already read.

Lifting the last picture, I realize that the bottom of the box looks a little wonky—off center. Sloping. I press my hand against it, feeling something hard and flat hidden underneath.

Mom's told me a thousand times about how women used the false bottoms for storage space under their hats, especially when traveling. But I've never sifted through this particular hatbox on my own before—only with Mom. I'd never paid enough attention to notice it even had a false bottom.

I tug at the ribbon poking out. It gives.

I lay the cardboard circle to the side. After picking up a large folded piece of paper, I flinch, bite down on my bottom lip, hold back a yelp. There it is: a red journal with a cloth cover. The same journal Bertie clutched to her chest when I saw her on the square. It appears to be the same journal Bertie clutched in the old photograph, too—the one I scanned into my computer and enlarged. I sift through the photographs and try to compare. Are they the same? It's hard to tell. The photo's black and white, offering no color comparison. And the journal in the hatbox has been branded “Alberta.” Not “Quin.”

I hesitate, not knowing what to expect. Will Bertie appear again if I touch it?

I tap the cover and draw my hand back quickly.

Nothing.

The journal stares back silently, a single name blazing across the cover: “Alberta.” Is there more than one journal?
Why was my name on the journal in the photograph?

Opening it, I begin reading, but find only lines of gibberish. And several warped pages, across which most of the passages are smeared.

But smeared or not, warped or perfectly smooth pages, what does it matter? The words themselves make no sense. Strange rants about clouds and lightning mixed with long paragraphs describing someone named Charley.

I put the journal to the side and unfold the large sheet of paper that was at the bottom of the hatbox, too. It's an old-fashioned city road map, the kind that used to show up in the Verona Chamber of Commerce offices. (The kind Mom still keeps in her own glove box.) This one dates from a bygone era when there was more around town than a QuikTrip gas station and a decaying square. It details all the businesses and landmarks that were around back then—even Verona High.

Someone's added their own writing and drawings to the map. The sheet's covered in cave-drawing-style symbols combined with arrows and labels. On the corner of Belmont and Sunset, someone's drawn a dark cloud in what looks like crayon. Next to the cloud, in ink, is the cursive announcement, “Frank Andrews, heart attack, August 6, 1947.” A yellow-crayon lightning bolt hovers over the 1200 block of Kissick, along with the message, “Linda Wilcox, miscarriage, September 12, 1947.” A strange object—I guess it's a snowflake—over Ferguson's Music is accompanied by the note,
“Wedding Proposal, Francine and William, February 14, 1948.” A tear-shaped raindrop over Hutchinson Street is connected by an arrow to the words “End of Kendrick marriage, November 6, 1948.”

All the childlike drawings of sunsets and funnel clouds and lightning bolts line up side by side with descriptions of marriages and deaths, illnesses, good luck, bad timing, and the dates of the events. Next to the section of the map devoted to the Verona square, a giant black-crayon line has been labeled “horizon.” Yellow and green crayon flames leap from the line straight into the sky, reminiscent of the strange light show I'd seen surrounding the Avery.

The map needs a key—some instruction on what it all means.

When the bell jingles downstairs, I grab the journal and race down to the store. Mom's home.
The key's arrived.

We blurt our questions at exactly the same time:

“How was rehearsal?” from Mom.

“What does this say?” from me.

Mom seems surprised to see the journal. She puts her purse on the counter and slides it from my hand. “Wow,” she says quietly. “I haven't seen this in years.”

“It was under—”

“Yeah, I know. I put it there. Bertie's mom gave it to me. After she passed away. I was still a kid. We were friends. I was maybe the only friend she had left.”

“Why was it under—”

“Oh, I just never understood it. And when I was little, maybe I thought my mom might toss it. She never approved of me tagging along after Bertie—who would? I haven't brought myself to dig so deep into that hat box—to see Bertie's old writings—in ages.” She carries it to the stool behind the front counter and begins to leaf through the pages.

“Does it mean anything to you now?”

Mom thinks for a minute. “She explained it to me once. I can't remember any of it. None of it made sense enough to stick. Like I said, I was a little girl. Not that Bertie was old—just a teenager herself. She'd been through an awful lot, though.”

She glances up. When she realizes she's got my complete attention, she goes on, “Bertie quit school at sixteen. To get married. She was really smart—people said she was always neck and neck with Emma in school. Maybe she could have given Emma a run for her money at being the first female valedictorian. But then along came Charley Foster. Everyone talks about whirlwind romances, but that one—the way people described it, it always seemed more like a tornado to me. Like it took all her original plans and sucked them up, sent them scattering.”

She falls unusually quiet, turning a few more pages in the journal.

“And?”

“And she got married, like I said. She had a baby. She used to tell people her life smelled like a flower garden—at least, that's what Emma said. That stuck with me. Maybe because natural gas smells exactly the opposite—like rotten eggs. And I used to wonder if there was a smell, if that's why Charley went back to the house that day. Bertie and their daughter—they were in the car, waiting for him. Ready for a Sunday drive. He was coming down the walk toward them, but he raised his finger and went back in. And the house exploded. Right in front of Bertie. Everyone thought the stove had been left on.”

“I never knew any of this,” I whisper. Bertie was my great-grandmother. The baby in the car with her was my grandmother. This weird connect-the-dots picture of my family history now has another dot—a tragedy in Bertie's house. “Why didn't you ever tell me?”

“I don't know,” Mom admits. “It seemed—well, like other parts of the story were more important. Or—more real, somehow. I was so young when it all happened, to me Bertie had always been—”

“Crazy? Eccentric?”

“I always remember her walking around with this journal, telling everyone about the skies. I have no memories of a smart girl who was best friends with Emma. I only knew who she was after the explosion. When you're really part of someone's life after that big a change, the way they were before seems like
a myth. Like some made-up story. If that makes sense.”

I nod. I understand.

“Now,” Mom says. She closes the journal and slides it across the counter, back toward me. “Tell me about rehearsal.”

Ugh. The rehearsal. I flash her an apologetic look. “I'd rather not.”

She nods. “You'll figure it out.”

“I'd better.” I pause, then change the subject. “Hey, Cass and I were listening to her new favorite radio station this morning. Turns out, someone was there bright and early, doing some advertising.”

“That she was. And she's only getting started. There's life in this old gal yet.” When she says it, she's looking through the front window, at the Avery, letting me know she's talking about herself and the old theater both.

As she falls silent, I pick the journal up off the counter. Maybe I have another view of Bertie's life as she started writing it, but I'm not any closer to understanding how to read it. Mom hasn't been the key I was hoping for.

After the fiasco of first practice, Mom helps me out by hanging a check sheet on the auditorium door. Such a tight schedule means we meet for rehearsal after school nearly every day. And such a small crew—only one class of students—means we have to double up on duties.

Some days we run speaking lines. During which I wind
up telling one of the red hats, “Why don't you try it without waving your arms and wiggling your eyebrows next time? I mean, it's not a silent movie, right?”

Other days we work on sets. Which amounts to scouring through the discarded furniture in storage and the half-used paint in the art room. Our “ocean liner” is actually a couple of old school desks painted silver. We attempt to create the illusion of a deck by stringing a rope between the desks, over which we decide to drape a sign bearing the boat's name. An unidentified sign painter decides to christen our own ship the SS
Down in Flames
.

I snatch it off. I scratch items off the to-do list on the auditorium door. I tell myself done is better than good.

But that sign bearing our ocean liner's name starts to feel more and more like another prediction destined to come true.

I start carrying Bertie's journal everywhere. To school, even. It's in my car. It's in my backpack. I study it through Mom's class as she offers local-history lectures on the glory of the Avery. As we wander aimlessly through two more rehearsals, always with the auditorium doors locked to outsiders.

But I have no idea what I'm staring at. Bertie's journal is worse than trigonometry.

“Alberta,” Cass says as she slides into place on the opposite side of the table we always share during lunch, just the two of us.

I jump, slamming the journal shut.

“Didn't you tell me once that was your great-grandmother's
name?” she asks, pointing at the cover.

I could do a lot of things at this moment. I could come out and tell Cass I saw the spark. No—sparks, now, between her and Dylan. First from the front of the Avery when they improvised their song, and later at rehearsal when he handed her the sheet music. I could tell her I watched Nick arrive. I could tell her about Emma, and how she felt so much like Cass does. How it seems like we're another act in a play that started decades ago, that somehow, this magic thing has opened up and here we are, with a shot, somehow, at making everything right. I could tell her I'm looking through this journal for help.

Only, right then, that all sounds a little nuts. Every bit as nuts as everyone used to say Bertie was.

And everybody says it out loud; they all brag, “I tell my best friend everything.” Or you look your own best friend in the eye and you say, “I'm so glad there are no secrets between us.” In the job description—that's the way Cass phrased it. But that's a lie. No one literally tells another human being everything. I held back on that Pizza Hut kiss. Some dumb kiss that didn't actually mean anything. So of course I'm hesitant now. Why wouldn't I be? This is the most important thing that's ever happened to me. Magic.