Spark (16 page)

W
e have one more shot at getting this thing right. Dress rehearsal.

Cass and Dylan are every bit as closemouthed about what happened the night before as the Avery itself was sitting quietly under the moon. They don't look at each other. They don't speak to each other. Cass barely even speaks to me.

Toby's hung his screen at the back of the stage. When he turns it on, the lights in the center twinkle. But the lights along the top let out a buzz and die. And as he and I stand in the middle of the stage staring, the top corner pulls loose from the rigging he's attached it to. It plummets like a bird that's been shot, then swings over to the left side of the stage, dangling pitifully.

“Just keep going,” I order, consulting Bertie's journal—it
is, after all, filled with every new scene I've written. I clap my hands in rhythm, hoping to get them all riled up—the same way fans stomp the bleachers to cheer their team to glory.

I say it a lot, actually: “Just keep going!” when someone misses a cue. “Just keep going!” when Dylan's music falls from the stand. “Just keep going!” when he tries to start playing again but is so flustered, he only winds up striking a bunch of sour notes. “Just keep going!” when two of our actors bump into each other so hard, they knock each other flat on their rears. “Just keep going!” when Kiki breaks the fourth wall—that invisible dividing line between the audience and the stage—as she stomps right past the footlights to tell me, “This line still sounds awful.”

“Just—just!” I shout when one of the girls cries out backstage that she can't find her costume and another actress steps forward, shrugging, pointing at her own outfit and saying, “I guess that's why this didn't fit right.”

“Just!” I shout when one of the red ball caps gets so frustrated, he starts doing a made-up dance routine in the middle of the stage.

“Just!” I shout when another is so lost in all my adding and deleting of scenes that he starts reciting lines he's memorized from
Return of the Jedi
.

But at a certain point, somewhere in the middle of Act II, each “Just keep going” turns into “Please.” As in, “Please pretend that chair was supposed to fall.” “Please don't point at
a skirt that's on backward and start laughing.” “Please don't do battle with invisible swords out of nowhere. If you have to improvise, please do something in keeping with the scene.”

On that last “please,” I look up and find Mom standing beside me, her arms folded across her chest.

The longer I stare, the more I become aware that my eyes are pleading now. Begging her to step in. I'm asking her, with all her years of experience teaching drama classes as talentless as ours, to save this ridiculously bad production.

But all she does is drape an arm around my shoulder and ask for everyone's attention, then adds preposterous encouragement. “Never fear. A bad dress rehearsal only means you'll have a great first performance.”

“You can't be serious,” I mutter.

Up on the stage, Toby is taking down his screen. “I got this, Quin. I'm taking it home, and it will be perfect for opening night.”

“I repeat: you cannot be serious.”

“Completely,” Mom insists. “The worse the dress rehearsal, the better the opening night. I think it focuses everyone's attention.”

“Then judging by this mess, we should all be up for Tonys this year.”

Mom laughs, starts backing up. She's talking and leaving at the same time, giving me no chance to argue with her. “I'm so positive, I took out a full-page ad in the paper for tomorrow.
‘
Anything Goes
in the Verona High auditorium!' I have no worries.” She's either completely flipped or has suddenly become Meryl Streep. “Take Cass somewhere after she changes. The two of you go do something fun to clear your heads.”

Only we don't. I drop her off at her house because she needs to feed Jerry Orbach. At least, that's what she says. But Jerry is quickly becoming her go-to
gotta wash my hair
excuse.

It's not that she's avoiding me, though. It's the Avery she's got on her mind. I'm sure of it. So much so, I putter around inside Potions. I even hang the Open sign in the door. Not that I care about making any sales. I'm just staying in the store to keep an eye on the front of the old theater. To see the moment Cass decides to show up.

Until the bell jingles, announcing the arrival of an actual customer. At least, I assume it's a customer. Until I turn toward the door.

“Aren't you going?” Kiki grumbles.

“Going?”

She rolls her eyes. “To the theater.”

When I don't answer, she runs her fingers through her frizzy orange hair and growls. “Come on, Quin. Admit it. You were there last night. You and Cass and Dylan. I was there, too. The alarm got tripped at Ferguson's, and Dad and I drove down there to check on the place. Nothing. He said it was probably some stray cat. I figured it was probably some stray kid on his bike, heading toward the alley behind the Avery. So
I checked. And lo and behold, the back door wasn't shut. And there were voices inside. Some kind of light.”

“Kiki, I have no idea—”

“Yes, you do. You know. What're you guys doing in there, anyway? Playing some sort of twisted game of hide-and-seek? I don't know what the draw is. I've never known what the draw is. It's an old, empty building, like the rest of the old, empty buildings on the square. I don't know why your mom's so into the idea of saving it—so something bad happened there. So what? Bad things happen inside buildings all the time. People have heart attacks and keel over. I bet at some point, someone got hit by a train. Why not save that dilapidated old depot? Maybe somebody choked on their dinner in the Fred Harvey restaurant. Why not save that?”

I try to act like I'm too busy stamping prices on perfume bottles to pay any attention to her. I know she never made it all the way in. But I get the distinct feeling that she is aware that she was pushed out. That the Avery evicted her. Kept her from exploring inside. She's working me for more info.

“What's the matter with your mom, anyway?” she goes on. “Is she senile? The rest of the town's humoring her because she was their teacher?”

Now she's got my hackles up. I narrow my eyes.

“You can save us all, you know.”

“From what?” I growl.

“From that musical. From total failure.”

I glance up at her over the rim of my glasses.

“Seriously. Think about it. You and Cass and Dylan go over there. Just like you have been. Like maybe you guys are even planning to do later today—I don't know. Then I call the police—anonymously. I report somebody trespassing. You guys get picked up. Say you go to Verona High.

“And because you've mentioned the school, they call the principal. And even at Verona High, where nobody ever gets in trouble, not really, where we all are expected to commit our fair share of adolescent shenanigans, the principal has to show the town that he's in charge. So you guys get suspended.”

“Why would I want to get suspended? Why would I want to get—”

“Because then, with the director and the lead and the musical director unable to perform, the musical is canceled.”

“But we're suspended.”

“Isn't being suspended better than being humiliated in front of the entire town?”

A flame of anger pops inside of me. “Get out of here, Kiki. I mean it.”

“What's there to be mad about? We're terrible. There's no way around it. Maybe Cass and Dylan had a couple of great moments during rehearsal. But so what? Sometimes I can sound half decent singing in the shower. What matters is how you perform when the pressure's on. And I'm telling you, this is going to be the worst performance ever in the
history of high school musicals.”

“Get out of here,” I repeat through gritted teeth. “I'm not getting suspended just to rescue you. You're getting on that stage opening night, and you are going to perform with the rest of us subpar humans. And if you try to call in sick, I'm going to go to your house and drag you to the auditorium.

“I wouldn't push me,” I warn. “After all, you just admitted to me that
you
were the one inside the Avery. You were trespassing. Seems I could call you in, report you. Right?”

She flashes me a nasty look, slowly retreats. The bell on the door announces when she's finally gone.

M
ore than ever, I want to get back to the Avery. All the pieces are here, but they're still in a giant jumble: Cass and Dylan being transformed on the stage, the past playing out scene by scene, the predictions.

The Avery isn't talking to everyone. Not everyone sees the sparks. Not everyone is allowed inside.

Just me—I'm the only one who's seen it all, every last bit, ever since that first day on the square. That's my name on Bertie's journal.

The clock is ticking. Opening night is upon us. The chance to save the Avery—the town. I see some of the connections, sure. But what do I do with it? What's the big picture? This story opened itself up to me—why?

After dark, I sneak out of Potions. I rush to the alley
behind the Avery, ready to attack the back door with my coat hanger key.

But stop abruptly when I find the door is completely rusted shut. And not in the way I found the side door to the theater rusted shut the first night I tried to get inside. This isn't a little skim of rust that's formed along the cracks. Rust covers the entire door, all the way around. So much of it, so thick, it completely conceals the lock—and the hinges—and even the doorknob. It looks like a thick scab that's grown over a deep wound.

Head spinning, I stumble out of the alley to the front door. More rust. So much of it, the padlock and chain around the knob here have no shape at all—they make little more than a slight bulge. But when I touch the rust, it's gritty; it flakes a little.

I dive toward the overgrown bushes at the front of the theater, reaching for one of the large rocks that surround the roots—part of what was once a meticulously landscaped area.

I suck in a breath and frantically begin to beat the bulge on the door. Rust rains, falling in crusty orange bits onto the cracked front step.

I pause and quickly glance about, hoping I haven't given myself away by making so much noise. Hoping that Mom—or, for that matter, Kiki—isn't now rushing my way, trying to figure out what the noise was.

But no one comes—the square is as empty as ever.

A gasp rattles in the back of my throat as I turn toward the door, anxious to find out if I'm any closer to freeing the padlock. Because the rust is regrowing, filling in any dents I've made.

The Avery's keeping me out. Period.

Refusing to give up, I squeeze between a wild, overgrown bush and a window. Cup my hands around my eyes and try to see into the lobby. But it's too dark. All I can see is my own hazy reflection.

Voices tickle the back of my neck. I stop breathing. Has someone come? Did I make too much noise?

But they're not coming to the theater's entrance. They're in the alley.

I creep cautiously toward the back of the building, crane my neck to peer around the corner. Watch Dylan run his hands across the door. “C-can't f-find th-the lock-ck.”

“But this has always worked,” Cass protests. “Use your skeleton key.”

Dylan points at the thick slab of rust. “Wh-where?”

“What if we never get back in?” Cass asks. Her desperate tone reveals that what she's really asking is
What if I never see myself that way again?

Dylan places his hand flat against the rusty door, pleading for this not to be true.

“Maybe it always had to end.” Cass sighs. “I mean, what did I think, that every time we had a play, I could come in
here and I would always look—and you would be able—? What makes me think anyone else would even see it? It's like we were always in the middle of a game of dress-up.”

I retreat, slipping out of the alley. “The right hearts,” I whisper. “The right reasons.”

I'm still struggling to put the pieces together when I hear the unmistakable sound of Cass's VW revving to life. They're leaving.

“What are you doing?” I ask the Avery. “I don't understand. Cass and Dylan don't have the right reasons? It's not enough to only want magic for yourself? Is that what you think? That I only want this for me, too? Why are you treating me like Kiki—like an intruder?”

The rust, though—it hits me again how much like a scab it looks.

“You're not hurt, are you?” I ask.

Still, no answer.

“Did I do something wrong? Is it because we left the door open? Because we accidentally let Kiki in?”

And still the Avery sits silently.

I'm being pushed. Shoved by some enormous, invisible hand across the square, toward the apartment. Up to my room. I lie on my bed. Sleep doesn't just find me; it attacks. And it sends me straight into a dream.

U
sually when my dreams start, I'm already in the theater. Already in one of the auditorium seats, hugging my legs, pointing my knees skyward. And the curtains draw open, exposing the screen. This time, the dream starts when I'm standing on the square, staring at the theater. The night air isn't crisp like autumn; it's sweet like a memory of a summer night.

The building in front of me is silent, still marred by broken windows and spray-painted No Trespassing warnings. But the neon Avery sign is blazing. And the marquee proclaims, “Tonight! ANYTHING GOES.”

I feel as if I'm being given a private invitation to a special performance. I'm certainly not dressed for the theater—I'm still in the same sweats and T-shirt I put on to go to bed. But
there's no way I'm going to turn down this invitation.

The moment my feet hit the front walk, the tattered awning above me heals. The buckled walk smooths. There is no rust on the entrance—no padlock. When the door opens, it's with a burst of relief, like the theater's saying, “There you are. I've been waiting for you forever.”

The lobby is empty. Flocked wallpaper clings tightly to the walls. A Coca-Cola clock still ticks.

Behind me, a little girl's voice sings out, “The skies say. The skies say . . .” Dahlia skips through the lobby. As she passes me, she seems so small—she'd hate to hear I've thought of her this way. But there it is, anyway: Dahlia's small, a grace note, a little girl in pigtails with a cloth flower tucked into the sash of her dress. “The skies say. The skies say . . .”

“Shhh!” another voices hisses.

I stop breathing as Emma races forward, seemingly out of nowhere. This is the angry Emma I saw on the TV upstairs. She grabs hold of Dahlia's arm, shakes her slightly. “You'll wake my father,” she scolds. “It's late. Why aren't you home? How did you get in here?”

“I didn't—I—”

“
Tell me.
How did you get in here?” She digs her fingers deeper into the soft flesh on Dahlia's arm.

“Oooow,” Dahlia whimpers. “What's wrong with you? Why are you so mean lately?”

“I'm not.”

“You are. You don't have time for me anymore. You used to let me inside. You'd give me free Junior Mints for lunch, and you'd eat Good & Plentys. And it would be our secret—candy for lunch. Only, you don't have time for secrets with me anymore. It's always Nick, Nick, Nick.”

It's true. Emma's bristly. Even the loose blond curls on the sides of her face look coarse, like grinding wheels that could wear down anyone who gets too close.

“You don't understand. You're too—”

“No! Don't say that. Don't say I'm too little,” Dahlia whimpers. “I'm not too small. I know things. Things you won't ever know, because you don't look up.”

Emma frowns in complete confusion. She's never heard this, I think. Bertie's never told her. Maybe Emma, first female valedictorian of Verona High, was always too wrapped up in her facts and figures to look at Bertie's journal, her map.

“I promised,” Dahlia insists. “I promised I would look out for you. There's a spell on you— The skies—”

At this point, Emma's frown disappears and she lets out a deep, throaty laugh. “Oh, Dahlia,” she says. “Do you ever do anything but cause trouble?”

“But I'm not!”

“Go home, Dahlia. I'm sure your mother will be up to check on you soon. What will she do when she goes to your room and you're not there?”

“But—wait! Don't!”

Emma pushes Dahlia out of the lobby, straight through the entrance—the same one I also found unlocked.

“I know why this door was open!” Dahlia insists. “You left it open on purpose. For Nick. See? I'm not so little that I don't understand. I know—”

Without a word, Emma only pushes Dahlia onto the front walk. I stumble outside, right along with her.

The door slams; a click indicates that Emma just locked it.

“I'm not giving up,” Dahlia mutters. “Think some stupid door will keep me out? I promised to look after you. I promised Mom I could keep my flower pretty and clean, and it is—I kept that promise. And I promised I would keep an eye on you, too. And you're more important than some silly old flower. Big people keep promises, and I'm big, and I'm going to keep my promise, too. Just watch.”

She's talking to herself, but I respond as though she's given me marching orders. I'm ready to watch—in fact, I'm already on her heels as she races to the side of the building and forces a path behind some bushes. “They've forgotten all about this old fire door,” she mutters. “But I haven't. . . .”

Her little hand finds a doorknob. We climb the carpeted steps inside, straight to the balcony.

Mesmerized, I take a seat in the front row. Dahlia props her forearms flat on the railing and plops her chin on the hands she's stacked one on top of the other. The Avery looks especially beautiful, with the chandeliers glowing and the
gilding shining on the box seats.

I can see them both clearly: Emma in the center of the stage, beneath a spotlight. And Nick off to the side, slipping out of his jacket. He hangs it with the costumes on the rack positioned side stage. And he joins Emma, stepping into the white circle made by the glowing spotlight. Emma looks happier than I've ever seen her. Even from a distance, that much is clear. And all she's doing is standing with a boy on an empty stage.

Nick reaches for Emma's hand as though to lead her in a dance. “We need music,” she murmurs. Her voice echoes through the empty theater.

“We have it,” Nick insists. “Don't you hear it?”

He draws her close, humming in her ear. Emma laughs, but her laughter dies as they begin to sway, to dance, to pull each other closer—so close, surely Emma feels the vibrations of his song against her own lips.

Dahlia sighs; she's got a dreamy look on her face. She pulls the cloth flower from the sash on her dress, doing a pantomime routine of a boy giving her the flower. She makes a shy motion with her head, tucking her chin down toward her chest before accepting it, bringing it to her nose, and sniffing its sweet perfume.

Watching her play fills me with a burst of happiness.

Nick's soft song floats from the stage below; Dahlia begins to dance in the aisle, now pretending her flower is a
boy, holding her, flirting with her.

Emma takes a step backward, dragging Nick with her, toward the staircases that are part of their set—the two staircases leading up to a platform that represents the deck of the ship for
Anything Goes
. It's so late—the night's performance wrapped hours ago, but the air tingles with the excitement and anticipation of a story about to unfold. They sit together, squeezed tight on the narrow bottom step.

Nick pulls off her glasses. And he kisses her.

Emma puts her head on Nick's chest, right over the heart diagnosed as weak. “Doctors don't know anything about hearts,” she says as Nick kisses the top of her head.

She raises her face, and their lips meet once more, just as the main house lights in the Avery come on in a blinding, garish thrust.

“
What
is going on in here?” George bellows, his voice reverberating through the theater. “What is the
matter
with you? Why would you ever entertain the thought of chasing after some tramp, some penniless musician? With everything you have going for you?”

Dahlia stands on her tiptoes, leaning over the edge of the balcony. A fight is erupting. A real fight, in the middle of the stage.

“No,” George bellows. “No.”

Embarrassed to be treated as a child in front of Nick, Emma shouts at her father, “It's none— You don't—”

“I know,” George shouts back. “He looks different to you here. That's the magic of the theater. Everything looks different—”

“Clearer,” Emma cries. “Don't you think he sees me differently in here, too? That in his eyes, in here, I'm not clumsy, practical, bookish, predictable Emma Hastings? That I can be—”

“—did not raise you to be some musician's wife—”

“Wife?”

“Some lowly musician no better than a hobo—”

The shadows in the Avery lengthen—the angry voices grab the darkest spots and tug at them, dragging them, making them bigger. This argument is vicious. It has teeth.

I squeeze the wooden arms of my seat, hold on against the words swirling like wings, whipping against the inside of the theater, smacking my face, threatening to shove me right out of the balcony.

“Did not raise you—”

“I'm not—”

“You will—”

“. . . love!”

Emma's shout acts like a blow to George's chest, pushing him backward, making him stumble across the stage.

Silence overtakes the theater as George touches his chest. I can hear his heart thump. Dahlia pants in rhythm to the beat. George's pulse has become hers—become mine—become the
pulse of the Avery. Dahlia covers her ears, the beat threatening to burst her eardrums.

George stares at the couple at the edge of the spotlight, still seated on the stairs that have been built for the set. Grasping each other as though to protect themselves from his wide, angry eyes.

“Love him,” Emma whispers again. With Nick still holding her glasses, she can't see the impact of her words striking her father.

“Love,” I whisper, as though it will sound softer coming from me. I want George to hear me up in the balcony, and to believe it. Want him to stop sending his frantic, out-of-control words to crash through the theater.

Instead, the atmosphere only grows tighter, like a fist. Even the drama masks on the sides of the stage look wracked with pain. I expect desperate wails to pour from their open mouths.

The argument continues to swell, all three voices firing shots at one another. Dahlia presses her hands tighter against her ears, trying to block it out.

George lunges for Emma. Nick holds on tighter. A struggle erupts. A battle over Emma, pushing and kicking and crying out.

Emma squirms to get away. Suddenly, she's climbing—a spur-of-the-moment reaction, it seems—up the narrow stairs with no railing. But she doesn't have her glasses. Nick does. She can't tell where the steps are exactly, not in that blurred
mess in front of her. Her feet falter. She stumbles.

“Don't, Emma—” Dahlia warns, but Emma doesn't hear her. Nor does Nick or George.

Nick and George are still shouting, still struggling, when Emma begins to climb again. Her arms fly out in front of her body.

“Emma!” I screech. “Watch out!” The angle of her body is all wrong.

But she can't hear me—no one can.

Emma puts her weight down. She screams at the same moment she finds no step beneath her—only open air. She drops to the stage below, crumpling into a terrible-looking heap, her arms and legs motionless.

George howls, fighting to break himself free of Nick's hold. Trying to get away from him and closer to his daughter. “Emma—” he cries.

Nick hasn't seen her fall. He only wants George to go away. Nick grips George tighter. “Stop it,” he shouts. “Leave us alone!”

“Move! She fell! She's hurt,” George bellows. Nick spins, seeing his Emma in a scattered-looking pile on the stage.

Nick wails—no words, just utter pain, desperation, shock. His Emma, his love, lying motionless.

Nick's feet pound against the stage. He's running—but he's never been good at running. Dahlia's fingers fly to her mouth; she knows how weak he is, of course she does; how
could she forget the day at the depot?

He lunges, grabbing Emma's body and trying to lift her.

His heart isn't up to so heavy a task. Even on the opposite side of the theater, I can feel his chest rip apart, splintering. He screeches and tries to ignore the pain, even as his body fails.

George pushes him aside, or Nick collapses—I can't be sure which at first. His side hits the stage, though, and he stops moving completely.

In George's arms, Emma's limp—her head twisted to the side unnaturally—her neck broken.

Two pairs of footsteps echo through the Avery—George's, as he races to call an ambulance, and Dahlia's, as she races out of the balcony, so fast, she doesn't stop to realize that she's dropped her cloth flower.

“Dahlia!” I cry out. I race down the stairs, chasing after her.

She bursts through the side door, holding her ears—this time, I know, fear is ringing inside them like cymbals being frantically beaten.

“Bertie!” She races across the square to grab the hand of the young woman staring up at the sky. She shakes her arm, trying to get her attention. “They're dying! Nick—Emma—on the stage! I promised—her neck. Help!”

Above, the sky is on fire—yellow and green. And the stars are sliding across the sky, forming a giant X.

“The sky, Dahlia. Look. We're too far south to see the aurora borealis, so it can't be that. It's more. It's magic.”

“No! Not now. Don't you understand? They're dying. And you're looking at the sky?”

Dahlia screams because she's never in her life seen anything so horrible—even though it happened on the stage, it isn't play-pretend. It's real. She screams because this time, finally, someone is going to listen. They're not going to treat her like silly little Trouble.

She screams until her mother drops her hat in the front window and the waitresses in the corner booth café and the owner of the hardware store come running. But her mother's shaking her finger at her, and the hardware store owner is relieved because he thought
she
was hurt, and it's all moving far too slowly. Nick and Emma will never be saved.

A tear trails down Dahlia's cheek. “It's too late,” she begins to mutter.

“No,” Bertie insists, pointing to the sky. “They aren't dead. Don't you see? You can't believe an end that isn't really an end. Don't you remember what I told you? The skies talk. They make predictions. The next time pure hearts meet up in the Avery—at the right time . . . You'll see. The next scene will play out. The final act. This sky, Dahlia. It will come to life, and it will change things. Next time . . .”