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We walked through the trees and stopped short.

Oh, Grandma. Thank God you’re not here to see this.

It was much worse than I’d thought.

The fire department saved some of the building, but the town would have to tear down what was left and completely start over if there was ever a hope of having the theater up and running again.

Lauryn’s hand tensed in mine. “It’s…it’s like a-a—”

“Nightmare,” I said.

Hollowed-out windows, crumbling bricks, naked drywall frames. Piles upon piles of rubble covered in soot and ash. Singed fabric from a few remaining seats flapped in the wind like flags that had gone through a war. And lost.

I wanted to curl up into a ball right there on the sidewalk and wait for someone to kick me into a gutter.

Gone.

Everything…so much work and sweat and tears.

Gone.

All of my grandmother’s work. Her pride. Her joy.

Gone.

Several cast and crew members crept around the rubble, turning over pieces of stone and wood with their shoes as if they were looking for something, anything, that might have survived.

But my feet were glued to the sidewalk next to Lauryn.

I could pretend to be strong like my father, my mother, my brother. But my Crowley heart wasn’t a phoenix. It wouldn’t rise from these ashes. At least, not the heart I knew.

Ms. Sparrow passed us, squeezing my shoulder as she did, and stepped under the caution tape. The cast stood still, and no one spoke as she moved among the piles of debris. She bent down near what used to be the stage-right alcove that led to the dressing rooms and pulled something flat and speckled out of the rubble.

Her clipboard.

As bad as I felt, I couldn’t imagine what must’ve been going through her head right now. How could you even begin to calm the nerves of over thirty people who stared at you like you were their last hope?

“Let’s all step away from this mess. Maybe under those oaks.” She pointed to the cluster of trees that Lauryn and I had just walked through.

We sank down into the warm grass and dead leaves with the others and waited for Ms. Sparrow to speak again.

“First.” She tucked her dirty clipboard under her arm. “I wanted to say thank you for meeting me here. I wish it were under different circumstances—”

Jack, aka Mercutio, raised his hand. “Is the show canceled?”

Ms. Sparrow pushed her glasses farther up her nose. “We’ve lost all our sets, all our costumes and props. I don’t see how anyone could expect us to still have a show. I…I’m so sorry, everyone.”

Murmurs and cursing drifted over the crowd.

I wiped away tears as I looked back toward the rubble. Some of those costumes were as old as my grandmother. Some she made, and they had been preserved in a glass case near the old popcorn machine in the lobby. Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, Hamlet, and countless renditions of A Christmas Carol—their sets were repurposed each year to save money. That theater and everything in it had survived for over eighty years only to be brought down by a drunken fool.

Cara rose to her knees. “So that’s it? There’s nothing we can do?”

“I’m afraid so.” Ms. Sparrow clutched her clipboard against her chest the way I used to hold Penny, my childhood teddy bear, when I was scared of thunderstorms. “It’s too late. We can’t put on a show when we don’t have a theater or a venue.”

I snapped the twig I held in my hands.

All of this was so unfair.