Look Both Ways (6 page)

“Of course I want to come,” I say.

“Perfect,” Zoe says. And before I know it, her arm is linked through mine, and we’re walking away from the horrible, disappointing cast lists and toward the glorious sunset.

I’m headed over to Legrand Auditorium the next morning, clutching the biggest available cup of watery dining hall coffee, when my phone rings. My mom’s picture pops up on the screen, one I took of her wearing three pairs of sunglasses at a flea market, and I’m surprised that she’s up this early. I really don’t want to talk to her right now, but I ignored her texts last night, and I know she’ll keep calling until I answer.

I hit talk. “Hey, Mom.”

“I got you!” She sounds genuinely delighted. “How
are
you, Brookie? Do you love it there? How did casting go last night? Tell me
everything.
”

“This place is pretty incredible,” I say. “I’ve only got a minute to talk, though. I’m headed to the theater.”

“Your very first rehearsal!” she squeals. “Which show is it for? I’m so excited for you.”

“This is just a crew call. My rehearsals aren’t starting for a while, so I’m doing lighting and run crew first rotation.”

“Well, everyone has to pay her dues,” my mom says. “Tell me what you’re in, sweetheart! I’m dying from the suspense!”

I steel myself for the sympathy in her voice when I tell her I’m not cast in anything. But when I open my mouth, what comes out is, “I’m in the ensemble of
Bye Bye Birdie.
”

My mom gasps. “Oh, Brookie, that’s
wonderful
!
Birdie
means you’ll get coaching in singing and dancing
and
acting! The full Allerdale experience. Are you thrilled?”

I can’t believe I just flat-out lied to my mother. What am I going to do when she comes up to see the show and I’m not in it? I guess I could fake an injury or the flu at the last minute.
Birdie
is the last show of the season, so I have some time to figure it out.

“Yeah, totally,” I say. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”

“When is it running?”

“The last two weeks. I’m in a side project, too, but I don’t know anything about that yet.”

“Ugh, I remember those side projects.” I can hear my mom’s eye-roll even over the phone. “They’re so silly. I was in one that was a series of monologues about going to the post office. Don’t spend too much of your energy on that; you have bigger things to worry about.”

I definitely do, but not the way she means. “Hey, Mom?” I say.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

I’m about to ask her if she pulled any strings with Marcus to get me into the festival; maybe it would be easier to know so I can make peace with it and move on. But I can’t make myself ask the question. If I don’t hear her say it, I can keep believing there’s a chance it’s not true.

“I miss you guys,” I say instead. “How’s everything at home?”

“Oh, everything’s fine. We all miss you like crazy, though.”

Talking to her is making me really homesick, so I say, “I’ve gotta go, Mom. I’m at the theater. I’ll call you soon, okay?”

“I love you, sweetie,” she says. “Dad and Uncle Harrison send love, too.”

“Love you back,” I say. I swallow down all my
I wish I hadn’t come
s and
I don’t belong here
s and
I want to go home
s, and I hang up the phone.

When I arrive at Legrand, about ten other people are grouped around the loading dock. Nobody’s really talking to each other, and at first I think it’s because it’s too early in the morning for getting-to-know-you chatter. But then a girl extends her cigarette pack to the guy next to her, and when he takes one without even thanking her, like it’s a routine, it occurs to me that the crew probably arrived at the festival before we did. The silence between them feels like the kind that can exist only between people who already know each other. I take a fortifying sip of my coffee and approach them.

The actor moves into enemy territory,
I hear in a nature-documentary voice inside my head.
Note the way her eyes dart from side to side. Her fight-or-flight response is working overtime.

There are only two other girls, and I approach the one with the cigarettes, whose stick-straight ponytail is so light blond, it looks almost white. I give her a big, friendly smile and say, “Hi!”

The girl’s almost invisible eyebrows scrunch together as she takes in my lip gloss and white tank top and shorts printed with stars. Everyone else is dressed in jeans, dark T-shirts, and sneakers, and they all have tons of stuff hanging from their belts—wrenches, rolls of black tape, paint pens, heavy-duty gloves, tiny flashlights. Where did they get all that stuff? Am
I
supposed to have that stuff?
The actor and the techie have markedly different plumage,
says the nature-documentary voice.

“The rehearsal rooms are over in Haydu Hall,” the girl says between drags.

“I…um, I know,” I say. “I think I’m supposed to be here, though. Is this the lighting crew?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

The guy next to her flicks his cigarette onto the asphalt and grinds it out with the toe of his boot. “We get actors today, remember?” he says.

“Oh,
right.
” The girl stubs out her cigarette, too. “You guys are only supposed to be here in the afternoons, though. Don’t you have rehearsal or something?”

“My show’s not rehearsing yet,” I say, hoping they won’t ask which one I’m in. Fortunately, nobody seems interested. “I’m Brooklyn, by the way.”

“Courtney,” the girl says. She doesn’t extend her hand.

Nobody else introduces themselves, so I say, “Did you guys get here yesterday, too?”

“About a week ago. We had to load everything in.”

A tall, lanky guy arrives at the loading dock and slides a box of doughnuts onto the concrete next to Courtney. “Morning, all,” he says. He’s wearing those thick leather wristbands with a bunch of studs, the kind Marisol and Christa refer to as “douchebands.”

“Dude, doughnuts
already
?” one of the other guys says.

“You don’t waste time, do you?” says Courtney as she flips the box open.

The guy smirks. “Fresh meat,” he says. “Why wait?”

This makes absolutely no sense, but the guy sitting next to Courtney laughs and says, “Respect.” I make a mental note to pick up some doughnuts for everyone later this week. I could use some respect.

“Speaking of fresh meat…” Douchebands turns to me. “Who’s this?”

“Brooklyn,” I say.

“Pretty.” I can’t tell whether he means my name or me, but either way, I’m creeped out.

“Yo,” the guy next to Courtney says. “Gimme another cigarette?”

Before she can dig out her pack, a woman with dark curly hair and a clipboard comes around the corner. I assume she’s the boss, from the way everyone starts gathering their stuff. “Listen up,” she says when she gets close. “We’re going to start hanging the rep plot today. Grab a piece of the plot, check in when you’re done, and I’ll give you another. Remember to pull out your shutters and label your circuits, okay?” She looks up. “Who brought doughnuts?”

Douchebands smiles and gives her a little salute.

“Of course,” she says. She plunks a folder down onto the concrete and takes a doughnut with pink frosting. “Get to work.”

Everyone descends on the folder and extracts little slips of paper while I stand off to the side. Finally, the boss notices me and asks, “Can I help you?”

“Um, I’m one of the acting apprentices?” I say. “I guess I’m assigned to lighting this rotation. I’m Brooklyn.”

“I’m Dana Solomon. You can call me Solomon. Grab a piece of the plot from the folder, and let me know if you have questions, okay?”

I don’t know what a plot is, but I pull out a slip of paper, hoping there’ll be instructions on it or something. But all I see is a bunch of symbols, boxes and circles and slashes and shapes that look like little milk bottles. I can only tell which is the top because of the heading, which says “MID-GAL R” in block letters.

“Um,” I say. “I’m really sorry, but I don’t know what any of this means.”

“You ever seen a light plot before?”

“Not really, no.”

“No tech requirement for actors at your school, huh?”

“I’m still in high school,” I say. I can practically see Solomon suppressing an eye-roll, but it’s not
my
fault I don’t know how to do this. I didn’t come to Allerdale to do lighting.

“Do you have tools?”

“No,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was going to be—”

“Zach!” Solomon yells, and the guy who was bumming cigarettes turns around. “Brooklyn’s with you today. Get her a wrench, okay?”

Zach doesn’t even try to hide his exasperation. “Fine,” he says. “Come on.”

He leads me into a small, cluttered room he calls the “LX office,” tells me to leave my bag on the ratty couch, and hands me a wrench. “Tie that off,” he says. “There are tie line spools all over the place.” I have no idea what any of those words mean, but I don’t want to look like an idiot, so I nod. Zach seems to be carrying his wrench in his back pocket, so that’s where I stick mine. I’m not wearing a belt, and my shorts immediately start to fall down on one side.

“Which piece of the plot do you have?” he asks.

“Um…” I look at the piece of paper clutched in my hand, now slightly damp from my nervous sweat. “Mid-gal R?”

“Mid-gallery, stage right. Okay, we’ll do that first.” Zach leads me onto the stage and points to a metal balcony about twenty-five feet in the air. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

“No,” I say. Finally, a question I have the right answer to.

“Good.” He looks at the paper for a minute. “Okay, we need three Source Four thirty-sixes, three twenty-sixes, and a nineteen. Let’s go.” I trot along behind him, hoping this is going to start making sense soon.

Source Fours turn out to be big black lights with clamps attached to the tops. We cart them up a narrow, winding, metal staircase; Zach carries four at a time, but I’m barely able to manage two. The floor of the mid-gallery is a metal grid, and I can see what’s happening on the stage below my feet. It’s a little disconcerting, and I feel a tiny wave of vertigo, but I don’t say anything.

I watch Zach hang one of the lights, and it looks pretty easy—slip the clamp over the bar, attach this thin piece of metal he calls a safety cable, tighten the bolt with the wrench. “That doesn’t look too hard,” I tell him cheerfully.

He looks at me like,
How did I get stuck with this moron?
“It’s not,” he says. “Put a twenty-six there and a thirty-six here, okay?”

“Sure.” I heft one of the lights up onto the bar. “So, where are you from?”

“Chapel Hill,” Zach says.

I dig my wrench out of my pocket. “I’ve never been. Do you go to UNC? I’ve heard it’s really—”

And that’s when the wrench slips out of my hand and falls through the grid in the floor.

“Heads!” Zach bellows at the top of his lungs, and everyone on the ground ducks and takes a step back. The wrench smacks the stage floor with an enormous bang about five feet from Courtney, who looks up and shouts, “What the fuck, dude!”

“I’m
so
sorry!” I yell back.

Courtney shakes her head. I’m too high up to clearly hear what she says, but I’m pretty sure it’s something like, “Figures.”

Zach wheels on me. “What the hell was
that
? I told you to tie your wrench off!”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat. It seems like those are the only words I’m going to get to say today. “I didn’t know what that meant.”

“Jesus. If you don’t know what something means, you
ask
! She could’ve ended up with a fractured skull! I know you’re used to flouncing around and listening to people clap for you, but what we do up here isn’t a game. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I say, and I’m suddenly afraid I’m going to burst into tears.

Zach pulls a knife out of his belt and flips it open, and for a second I have this crazy thought that he’s going to stab me and get rid of me once and for all. But instead he storms over to a spool of thin black rope, cuts off a piece, and hands it to me. “This is tie line,” he says, like he’s speaking to someone who might not understand English. “Tie one end to your wrench and the other end to your belt loop. Don’t
ever
let that happen again.”

“I won’t,” I choke out.

“Good. While you’re downstairs getting the wrench, go down to the storage room—it’s the staircase next to the office—and get me two ten-foot jumpers, two feds, and a sidearm, okay?”

For a second I think he’s messing with me, throwing around words that don’t even mean anything to make fun of all the jargon and tell me he knows how I feel. I smile at him gratefully, but then he says, “Okay?” again, and I realize those were actual instructions.

“Um. Two ten-foot jumpers, two feds? And…”

“A sidearm,” he says.

I know he told me to ask for clarification if I don’t understand something, but everything in storage will probably be labeled, so I should be able to figure this one out on my own. “Okay,” I say, and I head downstairs.