Page 28 of Specters & Spotlights

Elise scrambled for coolness, tucking her phone away. “Just talking to my best friend.”

Elise wasn’t sure why she felt like she needed to explain herself.

“Right,” Lark said softly, moving to her usual spot in front of the mirror. “Sounds like you two are close.”

Elise noticed not one, but two steaming coffee cups in Lark’s hands.

“For you,” she said, setting one down like it might be part of a spell.

Elise tilted her head. She didn’t drink coffee every day—some mornings asked for tea, others asked for silence—but there was something kind in the offering. She wrapped her hands around it, letting the heat bloom through her fingers.

“Thank you.”

Lark slid into the wig chair without further comment, tucking her knees together primly as Elise began the delicate art of transforming her into Elizabeth Bennet once more, starting with her pin curls. One bobby pin, two bobby pins, a mist of spray, repeat—just like yesterday, but with a little more familiarity in the air. Lark didn’t speak, but her silence wasn’t passive. She watched Elise in the mirror, not with vanity, but with interest. As if waiting to be seen in return.

The door opened again. And like a shift in wind, the Bennet sisters blew in, ribbons trailing, voices raised, the soft scent of hairspray already beginning to settle in the air. Bex led the charge with a steady hand on their teacup, somehow never spilling a drop as the others whirled around them. Sienna twirled through the doorway, hasty pin curls already becoming dislodged. Talia was mid-sentence. “Okay but listen—if I bail after they show up, it’s less rude, right?”

Romy brought up the rear with a quick reply. “Depends,” she said, finding an open spot in the corner of the crowded room. “Are we talking food poisoning, or ‘mystery family emergency’?”

“Food poisoning sounds more believable,” Bex added serenely, already distributing bobby pins like communion.

The chatter bloomed and flowed, layering over the clinks and clatters of pre-show prep.

They reminded her, in flashes, of the last Bennet sisters she’d worked with. Different names, different rhythms, but the same noisy loyalty. That show had been a family, too.

Elise stayed silent, content to observe.

“And anyway,” Talia sighed, dramatically flopping into a folding chair against the wall, “who hasn’t had a crush on Graham at some point? He’s impossible to read. Has anyone ever seen him flirt? I’ve literally never seen him even look at someone for longer than five seconds.”

Lark’s voice cut softly through the noise. “Thanks.” She was already standing, wig complete. She offered a half-smile in the mirror—enigmatic as always—and slipped out right before the room filled with even more dancers, waiting for their wigs.

Elise didn’t join the chatter. She worked. Watched. The theatre had always been a magnet for chaos, but sometimes it felt like the chaos was cultivated here—like it bloomed backstage, fed by nerves and rituals and stage lights too hot to be natural.

In the quiet that followed a particularly dramatic story from Bex involving an ill-timed double-invite, Ellen tugged gently at her wig cap and leaned in.

“Do you think Lark seems... off today?”

Elise looked up, but Ellen’s eyes weren’t on her, they were angled just slightly toward the hall.

But the weight behind it was obvious. Ellen was the understudy for Elizabeth. She wasn’t asking out of concern—she was checking the temperature. Reading the tea leaves.

Elise shrugged. “Hard to say.”

Behind them, the cacophony surged again: Rae shrieked over a popped button, someone else broke into a falsetto riff, and Bex managed to rescue the tea with one steady hand and a look of long-suffering grace.

But Elise caught the flicker in Ellen’s jaw before she turned her face to the mirror, expression neutral.

Nick finally wandered in around fifteen minutes before curtain, looking like a man who had lost a duel with a gin martini and a velvet couch.

“Tell me honestly,” he said, eyes bloodshot but still charming, “if I asked the orchestra to play extra-quiet today, do you think they would? Like... interpretive lullaby versions of every cue?”

Elise stifled a grin. “You’ll have to bribe them with snacks.”

Nick leaned dramatically against the doorway, eyes closed. “If I survive the first act, I’ll make them brownies myself.”

Then, cracking one eye open, he said: “Hey—do you have plans between shows today?”

“Just wig things,” Elise said, gesturing at the array of tools and pins around her like a queen at court.