“Don’t tell me what Mason would do!” she yells. Holy shit, she’s actually yelling. The boys drop the blanket and Lucia covers her mouth. “You don’t know what Mason would do, because Mason is dead!”
The force of her emotion has me dumbstruck. I look at Mason and I can tell he’s just as shocked. He shakes his head, like it’s all his fault. It makes me feel guilty, too, guilty for not getting what she was going through and why she wanted to do this séance so badly. I want to tell her that he’s here, right now, feeling for her, but before I can think of a way, she speaks again. Her voice is hard and bitter. “You’re not the only one who lost a friend, you know. I did, too. And so did everyone else here. We’re all grieving. Just because you not-so-secretly wanted to get into his pants doesn’t mean you get special rights to him.”
“Oh, snap!” Mason says, perking up.
“What?!” I squeak, my lungs struggling to breathe. “I didn’t want to get into his pants.”
“Sure. Of course not. And I suppose Richard isn’t your littleconsolation prize, either. Your rebound for a romance that never even happened.”
“What the hell does Richard have to do with any of this?”
She suddenly looks exhausted with all of it. “Forget it. It’s none of my business. You want to cope by pushing us away and losing yourself to some tool, you should be allowed to do that. Because everyone grieves differently. But stop acting like you’re the only one grieving.”
This conversation has gotten away from me at light speed. I feel disoriented. I barely recognize Asha like this, and none of her accusations seem fair.
“Maybe I should just go,” I say finally, at a loss.
“Maybe you should.” She stands up and I’m taken aback when I realize she’s still going to lead me back through the dark maze of rooms. I flinch and pull my elbow away.
“Can’t you just turn the lights on?” I ask.
Without a word, she walks toward the door and flips the switch, flooding the room with harsh fluorescents. I squint in the glare, then I’m out the door.
I don’t dare to look back.
It’s the night of the performance, and I’m standing in the hallway listening to the overture and trying to breathe away the jitters when Richard slides up next to me. “Look, I’m a professional, and I know you’ll be one, too.” He puts out his hand like he’s selling me a car. “Let’s concentrate on the craft.”
God,craft? How did I ever find him sexy? That’s one thing Asha was right about. He is a full-fledged tool.
The fact that he’s so transformed in my mind is tragic, my passion obliterated like a snail shell smushed on the sidewalk. Tragic, but also useful. When I watched Amanda and Richard do the first performance last night, the obvious fun they were having with each other made my nose wrinkle like I was smelling a fart. That was not surprising. Whatwassurprising was how their good chemistry actually seemed to hurt the portrayal. It was so light and smooth, it didn’t fit the intensity of the character dynamics at all. So I’m sort of glad for the hard feelings tonight, for his coldness, for my disgust. Maybe that’ll be what makes everything real.
“Craft is my middle name,” I say. Get ready to rumble, dick.
The first few scenes go great, but suddenly it’s déjàvu. Here I am again, rushing offstage into total darkness for a lightning-quick change that I’m not equipped to manage alone. Too late, I realize my error. My whole solution was wrapped up in Richardnot being an asshole, and I have forgotten to come up with a plan B. Richard isn’t here. Of course he’s not. How could I think I could still rely on him to help me out with a little stage logistics when he basically left me to die in the snow? He’s a professional, my ass.
My mind is racing as I try to troubleshoot the possibilities. I could start shouting for help, but the audience will hear me for sure. I need a quiet way to get help.
Mason. Maybe Mason, if it’s really an emergency, can help guide me. He helped me down that mountain. He could get me to the props table. But how to summon him? I couldn’t do it on demand at the ski resort, so what could I do differently now? What are the common denominators of all the times he’s shown up? One thing is that I’m usually feeling raw, vulnerable, and just generally like a total fuckup, so maybe that will work to my advantage now. I start picturing his face. Mason. Mason. Mason. A couple of seconds tick by. How long can I wait? I’d really hate to do another awkward square dance during an actual performance.
I squint into the backstage void. “Help me, Mason,” I whisper, and to my utter surprise and joy I feel two hands on my shoulders, steering me to the table. My tunics are quickly exchanged and then the garlands are placed across my outstretched palms and I am led back over to the edge of the lit stage. It all happens so fast that I actually have to stand and wait for my cue, in awe that Mason has touched me, and that his hands felt so warm and real, so alive.
“Go get ’em,” the owner of the hands says now, and I realize that I haven’t been helped by Mason at all, but by a girl. Amanda. It’s seriously demented that I think it would be less strange to be helped by a bona fide ghost than by her, but demented is getting to be my specialty.
Intermission comes without any more close calls, and I head to the band room/makeshift greenroom to relax for a few minutes.
But relaxing is out of the question. The only person wearing street clothes in a sea of tunics and draping gowns, Amanda draws my eye immediately. And she sees me. I’m going to have to say something to her, something that acknowledges that she helped me out despite the fact that I almost physically assaulted her the other day, and possibly also explain why I was busy whispering a dead guy’s name. I wonder what an etiquette book would suggest for that scenario. As I approach, I have to push the idea out of my head that this, too, is some sort of trap.Rise above, I tell myself.For your own sanity.
“Thanks for your help out there,” I say, my voice husky with the effort to sound casual.
“No problem. It’s going great so far, don’t you think?” she says. I nod, but she’s already turned away to help a freshman girl unlace her corset. Last night, when I came to the performance Amanda was starring in, I stayed in the audience during intermission. It didn’t even occur to me to come back to the dressing room to help people change. I hate that this makes Amanda seem nicer than me. Am I the only one who sees the trick, that she’s the absolute worst?
As if on cue, she says, “I didn’t tell on you, you know.”
I wave my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I can’t start arguing about the evidence of her betrayal now. I still have Act Two to do in about five minutes, and I don’t want to have to redo my hair and my makeup after I tear her delicate flesh from her bones.
She grabs my hand and looks into my eyes hard. “Hattie, I’m serious. Honestly, I didn’t even know why you were so mad at me at first. I mean, can you imagine me giving you a beer and then snitching on you for drinking it? I would never.”
Of course I can imagine it. That’s pretty much all I’ve been imagining for the last several days. “You were the only one who even knew,” I say, pulling my hand away and shrugging at the obviousness of this “case closed” investigation.
