“You’ve distracted Ms. Suarez,” Nicholas Blunt said to Chase, loud enough for the room to hear and snicker at her expense.
She realized she had been not speaking for a horrifically long time. Just standing frozen on the stage.
“Ms. Suarez? When you’re ready,” Nicholas directed her. A few rows back, Chase grinned, talking to an apprentice. She couldn’t see who.
“Right, sir.” She had no idea where she had left off. Wait, she squinted in the lights, yes: Chase was speaking to Harlow, whose audition had been flawless. Best of the day, so far. Harlow had the confidence and the chops. Sierra wished she hadn’t had to watch. Why did they have to audition in front of everyone like on one of those TV singing competitions? “I’ll take it from the top.” Sierra turned her back to the audience. She just couldn’t remember where “the top” was. Head down, fists opening and closing, grasping for the words. The spotlight burned so hot, sweat trickled down her forehead. She faced front again, cheeks flushed. She knew Romeo and Juliet backward and forward. But now it was gone. Say something! Anything! Preferably from this play!
“’Tis torture and not mercy. Heaven is here...’” She knew the minute she started that it was dead wrong. It was Romeo. But she gave in, went through with the whole thing. Then she exited stage left, through the wings, and kept walking until she got outside. Breathing in the sweet June air, sun coating her skin, mountains watching her from the distance, she managed not to cry. Eventually, she returned, through the lobby, listened at the doors for the monologuist to finish and slunk into the back of the orchestra. Just in time.
“Ethan Summit, reading for Mercutio,” Ethan said in his faint twang, that same shyness he had on the field. But as soon as he began, he metamorphosed: voice modulated deeper, no trace of his country roots, posture straightened, eyes alive.
Engrossed, she watched, losing herself until a hand squeezed her shoulder, firm and quick: she looked up to see Chase Embers. Walking out the door. He gave her a salute and approving nod before disappearing beyond the theater. It took a few seconds for her to remember to breathe.
7
IF ONLY WE WERE DOING THE TAMING OF THE SHREW!
When the theater doors crashed open, Ethan thought he might be hallucinating. He had only just wrangled his heart back from its breakneck beat, seizing it, slowing it down like he used to lasso wild calves as a kid. That was how this always felt to him: the stage.
“A FUCKING DORM?” a familiar voice shouted.
Ethan—and the entire audience—turned to discover Charlie Savoy stomping up the aisle, eyes set on Nicholas Blunt. Sierra grabbed Ethan’s forearm in shock, as though watching the twist in a movie. Charlie passed by, a meteor blazing across Ethan’s sky. She looked just as she had in his favorite film, Midnight Daydream. Same tangle of long, wavy hair, same red lipstick. He had seen her in person only once, despite weekly visits to her theater. He started going there before he knew she owned it, just for the movies you couldn’t see anywhere else. But the day after her crash, he’d arrived early, as if staging a one-man vigil, to be sure she was okay, and had been relieved to spot her inside the glass doors.
“If only we were doing The Taming of the Shrew,” the costumer whispered too loudly to her fellow department heads seated onstage.
Ethan’s anger flared. Don’t they know who Charlie is? An Oscar nominee. An otherworldly talent. The force that had gotten him through high school. He would steal his dad’s rusted-out Chevy pickup, make the hour-long drive every Saturday morning to that art house in Austin before his family was even awake, and he would see whatever was playing. Midnight Daydream had shown for almost two months straight. It broke his heart when it had finally left. That time had been precious. He could shed the social atrocities he had suffered at school that week and allow her film—about an insomniac outsider—to heal him.
“Seriously, Nick?!” She reached the front row, stepping onto the armrest of an occupied seat and climbing onstage with a graceful leap. This, all of it, was exactly what made Charlie exotic, fantastical, worthy of the sites clicked and ink spilled chronicling her.
“Let’s take five,” Blunt announced to the group. Charlie folded her arms, glared. “Ten, take ten.” Then, to Charlie he said, “You—” and pointed, signaling for her to come with him. She threw her head back, annoyed. As Ethan watched them disappear offstage, he instantly knew he’d made the right choice declining the American Repertory Theater summer program to come here.
He just couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to his letter. The one his friend Miles had insisted on passing along to Charlie. The one Miles said Charlie had never read.
8
PEOPLE FUCKING LOVE ME
Nick didn’t want to have to physically turn around to confirm that Charlie was still following. That might show the cracks in his authority. So he simply kept walking out of the theater, into the lobby, down the photo-lined hallway—a who’s who of Chamberlain alums—listening for the angry footsteps of her oxfords. Why was she exactly as he remembered? Why was he still possibly, probably, kind of, somewhat in love with her even after the irreparable damage she had caused his career? This was a bad idea. Could she tell he was nervous about this? Them? The whole summer?
When he reached his office, he noticed her clip-clop had stopped. He pivoted slowly, prepared to continue their argument in the hallway if necessary. But when he saw what had captured Charlie’s attention, he granted her a moment. The theater complex had been redone in the two decades since she had performed here. A gallery of glossy framed photographs now lined the corridor leading to the staff offices: so many accomplished actors on the Chamberlain stage through the years. Their names, shows, engraved in small golden plaques. Their own Walk of Fame. She stood before one of the photos, transfixed. This picture had been blown up nearly poster-size and placed at the center of one wall, anchoring a solar system of smaller photos that orbited it. It showed Charlie, just nineteen, onstage beside her mother in Much Ado about Nothing. Both so young, joyful. A celestial glow in the stage lights. That was that summer, when Nick had met her.
Only a few paces away from where Charlie stood hung another time capsule. Nick paused before this other photo. He had walked past it every day since arriving a month ago, but hadn’t really looked at it. Snapped that same summer, at the opening night party for Much Ado, it showed Nick smiling proudly beside his since-departed mentor, Grayson Crestway, world-renowned director and founder of the Chamberlain Summer Theater. The man who had left the theater in Nick’s care. That mighty responsibility weighed heavy in Nick’s heart, more now than ever.
So ensnared was Nick that he didn’t realize when Charlie arrived beside him, gazing at the same portrait. Neither said a word. After a moment, Nick nodded, then moved on toward his office. Charlie followed this time.