Page 104

And sure, the pain of losing Reed may have lessened, but it didn’t go away. Like a bad cut trying to heal itself, every time I saw something that reminded me of him—the train station overlooking his cornfields, Jenny’s Diner, or the elementary school where he had pitched to me—the wound opened, bled and stung and ached all over again. No bandage could fix this kind of hurt.

I had walked around the empty fairgrounds, hoping it would give me some kind of symbolic closure, but each passing humid breeze took me back to that smug smile he gave me when I kicked his ass in our basketball shoot-out and the dizziness of our meetup in the house of mirrors.

Even tonight, after I almost tripped on a bucket of rags and turned off the ghost light to work on cues, I swore I saw his shadow move across the stage. Probably just inhaled too many fumes from the latest coat of stain that Mr. Newcomb added this afternoon.

I fixed about thirty cues and set several new ones in the two hours I sat alone in the booth. Reading the script aloud for timing helped with the fade-ins, but it still wasn’t as effective as having someone reading with me.

God, I missed him.

My phone buzzed from the table next to me where the soundboard sat. The thin scar from Reed opened again as I read TJ’s text about how the Fulton Hawks won their game tonight. Reed’s team would be playing ours in the championship next week. A game that would not only change my life but his as well.

If Grandma were faced with the same decision as me, which would she have chosen?

You know which one, Eliza.

As much as she was a family woman, she would have always picked those in need first.

Crap.

The Fultons needed this. They needed it so much more than we did.

I inserted my flash drive into the board and saved my latest batch of cues. A small light flickered near stage left, and then something that sounded like footsteps dragged themselves across the stage.

“Hello?” I called into the darkness.

No answer.

Should’ve kept that ghost light on.

The flash drive stopped blinking, so I removed it and powered down the board. A loud CREAK sounded from below, making me jump out of my chair.

What the hell? “Hello?”

Silence.

There’s no such thing as ghosts. There’s no such thing as ghosts…

My hands shook as I draped the board with its cover.

I grabbed an emergency flashlight from one of the shelves next to me and turned it on. Moving it slowly from stage left to stage right, I yelped and dropped it as soon as the beam illuminated a dark figure and face I knew well.

“Ben?” I called. “What are you doing here?”

He raised a hand above his eyebrows and squinted into the beam of light I’d thrown on his face. “Jusssst want to see wha’ tha’ big deaaaaal is mmhere, Erin.”

Erin? Who’s Erin? “Are you drunk?”

He laughed and stumbled a bit to the side. “Maaaaybe.” A brown paper bag wrapped around some kind of bottle hung loosely at his side before he dropped it onto the stage and put a cigarette to his lips.

“You can’t smoke in here!” I yelled. Smoking hadn’t been allowed in this theater since the ’70s. Not to mention, he was dangerously close to the newly stained sets and the bucket of rags that Mr. Newcomb’s crew forgot to take outside.

A second later, a small spark glowed and lit Ben’s cigarette. But he must’ve burned his finger in the process because he cursed and then tripped over the ghost light cord.

“Watch out!” I moved to turn on the house lights so he could see better, but it was too late.

Ben fell.

The cigarette flew out of his fingers and into the bucket of rags, which exploded, some of the flames leaping onto Ben’s pullover. He jumped up and cried out, waving his arm wildly around as he stumbled backward toward Juliet’s balcony.