4
Jules sat about ten rows back from the stage, watching the ensemble rehearse. Every director had their own style, and Kari seemed to prefer to get the choreography down first. Jules wasn’t part of the first musical number, so she didn’t have to be here this morning, but there was always something to learn by observing. That wisdom had been drilled into her in high school, and she’d never forgotten it.
It’s in Her Kiss wasn’t a dance show at heart. It was more about the music and the drama, but even so, there was a fair amount of choreography involved. Jules loved watching Simon, the choreographer, as he worked, the way he tirelessly adjusted the actors to get the results he wanted. Occasionally, Kari jumped in with her own input, while Andrew, the stage manager, made notes on his tablet and moved stage props for the performers.
Jules had studied every aspect of theater in college, from set design to directing, and she was fascinated by all of it. Basically, the theater was her happy place, and she couldn’t see herself ever working anywhere else.
After a few minutes, though, her focus shifted to one dancer in particular. Sophie was magnetic that way. Jules’s attention always seemed drawn to her when she was in the room, and she hadn’t liked it a bit when Sophie pulled away from her yesterday. Hopefully, they’d sorted things out last night, because Jules really hoped they would be friends, at least until It’s in Her Kiss wrapped.
When the group on stage broke for lunch, Jules stood, gathering her purse and jacket, so she could join them.
“Miss Vega?”
She turned to see an employee of the theater standing in the aisle. “Yes?”
“I’m Sarah,” she said brightly. “And I wanted to let you know your dressing room is ready for you.”
“Really?” Jules couldn’t fight the grin she felt spreading across her face. Andrew had apologized yesterday that the theater was in the process of being repainted as part of its ongoing renovations and the dressing rooms had been inaccessible. But the part Jules couldn’t quite wrap her head around was that she would have her own dressing room.
That had never happened before. And it was so friggin’ exciting.
She followed Sarah down a flight of stairs into one of the theater’s basement levels, where the dressing rooms were located, tucked away beneath the stage. Sarah showed her to a room at the end of the hall. A white piece of paper had been taped to the door with JULIA VEGA printed in big block letters across it. And she was totally going to geek out and take silly selfies in front of it as soon as she was alone.
“See this stairwell?” Sarah asked, gesturing to the door across from Jules’s dressing room.
She nodded.
“If you go up those stairs, you’ll be in the hallway to stage left. Would you like me to show you?”
“No, that’s okay,” Jules told her. “I’ll go back up that way and see where it comes out.”
Sarah opened the door to the dressing room, indicating for Jules to follow her inside. It wasn’t one of the fanciest dressing rooms Jules had ever seen. This was a smaller theater, after all, and nothing about it was particularly fancy. But to her, it was perfection. There was a large sofa to her right and the dressing table to her left, facing a mirror ringed with bulbs where she’d sit each night to do her makeup.
“The bathroom is through there.” Sarah pointed to a door on the far wall. “And you have a mini fridge and a microwave here.” She pointed again. “It’s stocked with water and a few basic snacks, but if there’s anything in particular you’d like, let us know, and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.”
“I’m sure whatever’s in there is fine,” Jules said, nearly overcome with the urge to jump around and completely lose her cool, because…bucket list!
“Okay. Just let me know if you need anything,” Sarah said as she backed out of the room.
“Thanks so much, Sarah.” Jules stood there for a moment, taking it all in. She whisper-squealed her excitement, and then she snapped a quick selfie to send her mom. Almost immediately, her phone rang.
“Tell me all about it,” Paula said in lieu of hello.
“Wait. Let me FaceTime you instead, and then I can show it to you,” Jules told her mom. “Hang on.” She ended the call and dialed her through FaceTime, smiling when her mom’s face appeared on the screen. “Hey.”
“Oh! I see your makeup table,” her mom said, peering intently at the screen.
“Can you believe it?” Jules panned her phone around the dressing room, letting her mom see the whole space. “Oh, and they said there were snacks in the fridge. Let’s see what I’ve got.” She crouched, opening the door to the mini fridge. Inside, she found a sampling of fruit, yogurt cups, and crackers, although she wasn’t sure why those were in the fridge.
“I can’t wait to see it in person,” Paula said. “We’ve already booked our flights for the first night of previews. Your brothers are just staying for the weekend, but your grandma and I will be there almost a week. And yes, we’re seeing the show every night.”
“Aw, Mami, I can’t wait.”
“I can’t either, sweetie.”
They talked for a few more minutes before Jules ended the call to find her castmates and see what they were doing for lunch. But once she was in the hallway, she couldn’t resist posing for a selfie by her name on the door.
“Oof. I hope you’re not letting that go to your head.”
She turned to find Sophie standing a little way down the hall, watching her with an amused smile. “Oh, please. Like you wouldn’t take a selfie if it was your name on the door.”
“I absolutely would,” Sophie agreed. “Want me to take one for you?” She held her hand out for Jules’s phone.
“Thank you.” She handed her phone to Sophie, then posed for several photos in front of her dressing room door.
“Here you go.” Sophie handed back the phone. “They ordered sandwiches for us upstairs.”
“Really?” The production team for this show really seemed to be taking good care of them. That wasn’t always the case, and it made her extra appreciative when she encountered a good working environment like this one.
“Yep. You coming?”
Jules nodded as she fell into step beside Sophie, trying out the stairwell Sarah had pointed out to her earlier. “So where’s your dressing room? Are we all on this hallway?”
“I think so, yeah,” Sophie said. “I’m down the hall, sharing a room with Tabitha.”
“Oh cool. She seems nice.”
They came out at the top of the stairs, in the hallway to stage left as Sarah had said. Together, they walked to the break room, which was already bustling with cast and staff members, busily filling plates as they talked about the morning’s rehearsal. Jules and Sophie made their way to the food set up in back. They fixed plates and found empty seats across from each other at one of the tables.
Jules sat beside Tabitha, who was midway through a story about a bad date she’d been on over the weekend, and from there, they went around the table with everyone trying to outdo each other with terrible first date tales. “What about you, Jules?” Amir asked.