Questions chase one another around the carousel of his mind. Who shot Sharif and how severe are his injuries? Why did Sharif wave him back? If the lights outside the library are law enforcement or paramedics, why aren’t they rushing inside? Is it because the assailant is still here? Is there only one? Are parents being notified? What is he supposed to do?
Onstage Aethon-the-donkey is pacing along the frozen rim of the world. From Natalie’s speaker comes the sound of ocean waves collapsing onto gravel. Olivia, wearing a big soft gull head and yellow tights, points with one of her homemade wings to a pile of green tissue paper on the stage. “I’ve heard,” she says, “that if you eat enough of it, you’ll feel funny. Though I can tell you right now, a jackass like you is never going to grow wings.”
Alex-who-is-Aethon picks up some green tissue paper, jams it into his papier-mâché donkey mouth, and steps off the stage.
Olivia-the-gull turns to the chairs. “It’s no use for an ass like that to chase after castles in the sky. Being sensible is called being ‘down-to-earth’ for a reason.”
From offstage Alex calls, “Well, something’s happening, I can feel it.” Christopher converts the karaoke light from white to blue, and the towers of Cloud Cuckoo Land glimmer on the backdrop, and Natalie replaces the rumble of the waves with sunken bubbling and gurgling and trickling.
Alex steps onstage holding his papier-mâché fish head. Sweat has glued his bangs to his forehead. “Can we take a break, Mr. Ninis? Halftime?”
“He means intermission,” says Rachel.
Zeno looks up from his trembling hands. “Yes, yes, of course, a nice quiet intermission. Good idea. You’re doing so wonderfully, all of you.”
Olivia lifts off her mask. “Mr. Ninis, do you really think I should say ‘jackass’? Some people from church are coming tomorrow night.”
Christopher heads for the light switch but Zeno says, “No, no, it’s better in the dark. Tomorrow you’ll be working backstage in low light. Come, let’s sit backstage, behind the shelves Sharif set up, away from the audience, just the way it will be tomorrow night, and we can talk about it, Olivia.”
He herds them behind the three bookcases, and Rachel gathers the pages of her script and sits in a folding chair and Olivia stows the crumpled green tissue paper in a bag and Alex crawls beneath the rack of costumes and sighs. Zeno stands at the center of them in his necktie and Velcro boots. At his feet the microwave-box-turned-sarcophagus transforms momentarily into an isolation box behind the headquarters at Camp Five—he half expects Rex to rise from it, emaciated and filthy, and adjust his broken glasses—and then it becomes a cardboard box once more.
“Do any of you,” he whispers, “have a cell phone?”
Natalie and Rachel shake their heads. Alex says, “Grandma says not till sixth grade.”
Christopher says, “Olivia has one.”
Olivia says, “My mom took it away.”
Natalie raises a hand. Onstage, on the other side of the bookshelves, the submarine gurgle still bubbles out of her speaker, disorienting him.
“Mr. Ninis, what’s a jiff?”
“A what?”
“Miss Marian said she’d be back with the pizzas in a jiff.”
“A jiff’s like a fight,” says Alex.
“That’s a tiff,” says Olivia.
“Jif is peanut butter,” says Christopher.
“A jiff is a short time,” says Zeno. “A little while.” Somewhere out in Lakeport, sirens rise and dip.
“But hasn’t it been more than a jiff, Mr. Ninis?”
“Are you hungry, Natalie?”
She nods.
“I’m thirsty,” says Christopher.
“The pizzas were probably delayed because of the snow,” Zeno says. “Marian will be back soon.”
Alex sits up. “We could drink some of the Cloud Cuckoo Land root beer?”
“Those’re for tomorrow night,” says Olivia.
“I suppose it won’t hurt,” says Zeno, “if you each have a root beer. Can you get them quietly?”
Alex hops to his feet and Zeno rises to his tiptoes to watch over the tops of the shelves as the boy walks around the stage and ducks into the space between the painted backdrop and the wall.
“Why,” asks Christopher, “does he have to do it quietly?” and Rachel reads her script with one index finger tracing the lines and Olivia says, “So about the swearing, Mr. Ninis?”
Is Sharif bleeding to death? Should Zeno be acting faster than this? Alex crawls out from the far end of the backdrop in his bathrobe and shorts carrying a case of twenty-four Mug root beers.
“Careful, Alex.”
“Christopher,” whispers Alex, as he rounds the apron of the plywood stage, all of his attention on fishing a can from the top of the case, “here’s one for—” and he catches a toe on the riser and trips and a dozen cans of root beer take flight over the stage.