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The stage door slammed shut behind me, and half the cast glared and hissed. “You are so busted,” Raul whispered, a sword belted to his waist. He and all the other Montagues frowned.

Right, because you’ve got all your lines and blocking memorized— Oh, wait…you don’t.

I brushed by Cara, our stage manager, who wore her famous disappointed frown that she normally reserved for the freshmen theater students, and crept along the side of the auditorium till I reached the lobby. After shoving a dollar into the vending machine for a drink, I grabbed it and flew up the stairs to the booth.

I wedged my trusty wooden ruler in its place so the door wouldn’t lock me in and started getting everything ready. The eyes of Andrew Lloyd Webber stared at me from his autographed picture on the wall. “Stop being so judgy,” I whispered to him as I hurried to pull up the show file. “I’m not that late.” I checked the time on my phone and winced.

Okay, maybe I was.

Cara barked orders at the other onstage crew members about how to properly set up act 3, scene 1. I missed the first cue waiting for the file to load but quickly caught up with the cast. I loved the lighting of this scene—lots of slow, creeping burnt oranges and deep reds curling in toward the center as the anger flared up between Tybalt and Mercutio during their duel. Everything was hitting perfectly.

I leaned back in my chair and stuck my tongue out at the framed face that had scolded me moments before. “See?” I said to him. “Just because I was late doesn’t mean I wasn’t prepa—”

A bright yellow box appeared on the computer screen over the display: “ERROR: SYSTEM SOFTWARE INCOMPATIBLE.”

“Wait. What?” I rolled my chair closer, and a second later, the computer and the board shut down, putting the entire auditorium in the dark.

Everyone on the stage groaned, and the distinct click of Ms. Sparrow’s heels sounded on the hardwood. “Ms. Crowley? Everything okay up there?”

I shot up out of my seat, sending it slamming into the door. The ruler snapped in half, the door closed, and the lock clicked. Great. “Everything’s fine! I got an error warning before the entire system crashed, but I’ll get it up and running in a sec.”

“Define ‘a sec’?” Cara asked over the radio.

My eye twitched. Since when was a stage manager also the director?

I switched on the house lights, which ran separately from the board, and grabbed the manual, flipping to the index till I found the section on troubleshooting errors.

“If an on-screen error warning has flashed, hold down numbers 7, 8, and 9 on your keypad and turn off the console…”

What? “It’s already turned off!” I whisper-yelled at the book and shook it.

“Eliza?” Ms. Sparrow called again. “Would you like Cara to come up and give you a hand?”

I’d rather push my finger into a wall socket, thanks. “No, no. I’ve got it. Just a sec.”

My stomach squirmed and soured as I read over the suggestions to fix the board. None of them had an answer for my board’s problem.

Screw it.

I held the 7, 8, and 9 buttons, and then pressed the power button, waiting and praying for it to reboot while I took a another quick look at the framed picture of Andrew Lloyd Webber. “If you help me with this reboot, I promise never to make fun of CATS again.”

Not out loud, at least.

The screen blinked twice, and the small yellow and red lights blinked on. Yes!

And then a new message appeared on the board: “INSTALLING UPDATES. THIS MAY TAKE A WHILE.”

Oh my God, noooooo.

I swallowed over the rising bile in my throat and popped my head up into the window toward the stage. “Um, it says it’s going to take a while to install updates. So I’ll just turn on the presets. I’m so sorry.”

“Maybe if you had been here earlier, you could’ve run the updates before rehearsal,” Cara snapped from somewhere in the dark.

Maybe you should—

“Cara, that’s enough.” Ms. Sparrow’s voice turned sharp, firm. “Eliza, please meet me in the kitchen after rehearsal.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I rattled the doorknob and cursed under my breath. I was locked in. “Ms. Sparrow?” I called out.