TWO DAYS AND seven hours of sleep later. Opening night. Brain dead. Words. Lost.
Despite my best efforts to keep the cast and crew on track, we were running nearly an hour late. The lobby was filled with a restless horde, the critics and avid theatergoers who had responded eagerly to Bill’s attempts to drum up early business.
Everything was insane backstage. Just that afternoon, John had discovered that the iron manhole-cover frames were rusting, leaving dried-blood streaks across the set every time they were dragged to a new position. Bill loved the effect; he’d ordered the crew to drag the frames around in random patterns.
The theater smelled vaguely like a swamp—Bill’s brilliant plastic sheeting was retaining puddles of stagnant water. Costumes were splitting at the seams, and I’d already made two emergency runs for additional hot-glue guns. The printer had not been able to complete our programs on our expedited schedule; we’d been reduced to photocopied black-and-white pages. The projector for the supertitles jammed. One of the running crew dropped a crate of flashlights, breaking more than a dozen bulbs. The sound system developed a hum that sounded like the birthing pangs of feedback.
Ordinarily, I thrived on the rush of adrenaline that came with a show’s opening night. Tonight, though, I knew that we were pitifully unprepared. Tonight, we were displaying our unformed show to hordes of fascinated critics, to eagle-eyed professionals who were going to destroy my theater career forever.
When a show was in crisis, however, I moved onto another plane. My stride lengthened as I walked up and down the aisles, draping programs over seats because we hadn’t lined up ushers for our early opening. My fingers tingled as I applied my hot-glue gun to costume after costume, encouraging the actors to use more baby powder to ease on the balky things, to reduce the pressure on the seams. My lungs burned as I climbed up to the catwalks, as I disassembled and reassembled the balky projector. (We lost one slide, which melted into a hopeless pool of goo, but I figured the audience wasn’t going to understand a word of the foul-mouthed hip-hop gibberish anyway.)
This was why I lived in the theater—this feeling of being alive, of being poised on the edge of disaster, of having the power to save everyone, to save everything. This was the energy—the charge—that I would miss when I settled down to take the LSAT. To apply to law school. To commit my life to maximizing profits per partner.
At least my father wouldn’t be in the audience. Our theatrical change in schedule had caught him by surprise; he couldn’t get out of a charity benefit that he was hosting. Likewise, my high school debate coach was unaware of tonight’s chaos; he still had tickets for our originally scheduled debut. This would be my first opening night that either of them had missed, but I was actually relieved.
I took a deep breath and completed my preshow responsibilities with the brisk efficiency that had always served me well at the dinner theater. I reminded the actors when they had half an hour left, then fifteen minutes. I peeked out from the theater’s wings to see some of the most prominent critics in the Twin Cities, some of the most vocal voters for our local Ivey Awards. I could see Bill pacing at the back of the theater, arms crossed over his chest, head freshly shaved. His black turtleneck made him look pale, cadaverous.
“Do you think it’s too late to get out of Dodge?” John’s question was a whisper in my ear, and I realized that I’d subconsciously heard him come up behind me, felt his broad chest against my back.
The last few days of chaos had solidified the trust between us. We’d worked side by side to salvage the show, to make it presentable to the public. We’d seen each other at our worst—tempers flaring—and at our best—cajoling our crew into delivering more than anyone had thought humanly possible. We’d stolen meals together whenever we could, trying to convince ourselves that fast-food grease was actual nourishment.
Along the way, we’d shared more than a handful of kisses. The night before, we’d collapsed on a couch in the prop closet, sneaking a few hours of exhausted sleep before we attempted to work more of the impossible to meet Bill’s insane deadline. I’d let myself relax against John’s hard body, felt his arms fold around me with an ease, a simplicity, that I’d never known before, not with any other man.
When I had awakened, he’d been propped up on his elbow, his expression inscrutable in the light that filtered in from the dressing room. I’d raised my hands to his face, traced the line of his mustache. He caught my fingertip lightly between his teeth, making me gasp in surprise. His palms ranged down my body, awakening more energy than I had dreamed possible in my exhausted, preshow frantic state. Only the arrival of the carpentry crew interrupted our idyllic interlude. John kissed me hard, to silence my giggles, and I nearly followed through on our original plan, carpenters be damned.
Now I let myself lean against him, and I answered softly, “Maybe we’re just too close to the production. Maybe it’s better than we think it is.”
He turned me around to face him. “Franklin, you are an optimist.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Or else I’m just ready to be committed.”
He brushed a kiss across my lips. “That sounds like the stage manager I know and love.”
I started at the last word, immediately told myself it was just part of a familiar phrase, a cliché. It didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything. I didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to feel. I glanced at my watch. “I have to call five minutes.”
John stepped aside, his face unreadable behind his mustache. “Break a leg,” he said.
I started to answer but ran out of words. I settled for finding his hand, squeezing his fingers. Then I escaped to the dressing room for my final call before the show began. After notifying the actors, I darted up the ladder to the production booth. I could hear the expectant hum of the crowd below.
Taking my seat, I looked around, making sure that I had my script ready, my headset at my fingertips. Even as I scanned the booth, I realized that something was strange, something was out of place. My nose twitched, and I squinted into the shadows in the corner.
A large vase of roses loomed on the edge of my desk. In the shadows, their crimson petals were black. I fished the card out of the arrangement reflexively. I already knew what it would say. “I love you. I’m sorry. Can’t we try again?”
That was the message Drew had left on the dozen roses he’d had delivered to my apartment on Sunday night, after I broke up with him. And the dozen that had waited for me in the lobby yesterday morning, on Monday. And now here.
He was an actor. He had to be as broke as the rest of us. Now I was going to make him bankrupt, in addition to making him miserable. I gritted my teeth and wished that I had some way of reaching out to Teel, some way of forcing the genie to make all of this right, to correct the absolute and utter disaster I had made out of poor Drew’s life.
Besides, if I still had that third wish, I could have used it to salvage our production. I could have harnessed Teel’s magic to redeem Romeo and Juliet, to transform the show into something boring and ordinary and successful. I could have saved my reputation and the reputation of every single person working on the show.
But no. I’d squandered my last chance at magic. I deserved the disaster that was about to unfold.
I cursed and settled my headset over my hair. It was time to sink or swim.
“House lights to one half,” I said. My blood sang as the lights dimmed. The audience’s chatter faded away. “House lights out,” I said. “Projector cue one, ready. Projector cue one, go.”
The first slide was projected on John’s velvet curtain. Our Prologue, one of our few male actors, pummeled the set with an iron pipe, and then he bellowed,
“Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”
As the echoes of metal clanging on metal died down, the actor waved toward the supertitles that flashed above him, translating the Bard’s poetry into a poor excuse for a joke:
“God-damn Verona-town, I say,
Two fam’lies raise their old AK-
Forty-sevens…”
I couldn’t make myself read any more; I didn’t have time to watch the ridiculous words slipping from slide to slide. Instead, I listened to the murmur of the audience, their growing uncertainty as the stage remained pitch black. I could hear the confusion, the polite mystification, as every single person wondered whether the stage manager—whether I—had forgotten to call a lighting cue.
We’d handed out the flashlights, but no one seemed to understand what to do with them.
Swearing, I contemplated using the public address system, the emergency microphones that were intended to let the audience know about fires, earthquakes, floods, and other disasters at least half as serious as an entire production proceeding in absolute darkness. But then, a single feeble light flickered across the stage. Another followed it a moment later, picking up the Prologue’s face. A few more chimed in, exploring the tangle of metal, the reflective sheen of puddled water.
The audience had figured out what was going on. With the lighting, at least.
I forced myself to settle back into my chair, to call the next dozen cues. I could sense the crowd’s confusion, though, as more and more women came on stage, posturing and beating the set with iron bars, swaggering like caricatures of warriors in extreme fighting contests. Which, of course, they were. Caricatures. Not warriors.
It wasn’t until Jennifer entered and the other actors started calling her “Romeo” that I heard a collective sigh of relief. People were catching on. They were beginning to understand. Not that comprehension helped much when it came to building audience rapport. By then, the supertitle slides had flashed some of their most offensive contemporary language, n-words, and c-words, and m-compound-nouns leading to several surprised gasps.
The actors seemed thrown by the audience’s reactions. Either that, or they were terrified they were going to slip off of John’s set. The plastic seemed much more slick than it had in rehearsal (although that was probably an optical illusion, created by the near darkness that enveloped the stage). I winced over at least three tumbles, grateful that I’d left extra Ace bandages in the dressing rooms.
Somehow, we limped through the first act. We got through the masquerade where the star-crossed lovers met, through the balcony scene, through a dozen more chances for every single actor to work out his or her frustrations against the iron set. Romeo and Juliet fled to the meddlesome Friar Lawrence, and the priest agreed to perform his secret wedding.
“House lights to half,” I called into my headset, and I was rewarded with seeing the audience for the first time since the show had begun.
Or, rather, I was punished by the sight.
I’d stage-managed a few shows where the audience didn’t realize it was time for intermission. I’d witnessed that uneasy silence, when they didn’t know if they were supposed to clap, when they didn’t know whether they were supposed to react.
But every other time that I’d worked on a…challenging show, I’d solved the problem by bringing up the house lights. Audiences wanted to work with actors. They wanted to like productions. They wanted to applaud for shows. Even when they weren’t certain that it was time to clap, they always obliged when the lights actually came on.
But not for us. Not for Romeo and Juliet. Not for the titanic disaster that was capsizing in front of us.
Not a single person applauded. Instead, they started talking to one another, murmuring, turning the pages of their programs as if they were certain that they had missed something, overlooked some note that explained how they had stumbled onto this bizarre postmodern comedy performed in an incomprehensible foreign language.
I thought I was going to be sick.
But I didn’t have that option. I took off my headset and made a quick round through the dressing rooms. The actors were silent. They knew the show was flopping.
Drew sat in front of his mirror, a bandage in his hand as he assisted Stephanie Michaelson with wrapping her knee. She was leaning close to him, pursing her lips. Unkindly, I wondered if she was actually in any pain, or if she was just reveling in Drew’s attention.
I couldn’t keep from glancing at her hands. No engagement ring. She must have removed it for the show; it didn’t exactly match Bill’s vision of Verona. Or maybe she’d given it back to Norman, after his little performance at Mephisto’s. Maybe she had moved on from my former fiancé to my former boyfriend.
I tried to care, but I just wasn’t able to summon the emotion.
In any case, as soon as Drew saw me, he forgot that Stephanie was alive. He sat up straighter, tracking my every movement with his eyes. I saw the eagerness that stretched his muscles, as if he were a hound scenting a rabbit in the underbrush.
He wanted me to say something about the roses. I had the power to make everything all right for him. I could redeem even the disaster of our production. All I had to do was tell him that I loved him.
Instead, I looked away and said, “Fifteen minutes, please.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his shoulders slump. His absolute despair made my eyes water, even as Stephanie leaned closer to him. She whispered something that I suspected was supposed to be encouragement.
Steeling my heart, I climbed back into the production booth. I dug into my backpack to fortify myself with some snack, but I found that I’d depleted my supply during the past crazy couple of days. Without an edible morsel in sight, my food diary mocked me from the bottom of the bag.
With my stomach grumbling, the second act didn’t get any better than the first. So many people had left at intermission that we had completely insufficient lighting for the second half of the show. I realized that I’d never set up a box for people to drop off their flashlights, so we probably lost a third of our stock. The supertitle projector jammed again. The plastic sheeting caught on a corner of the iron framework, sending a shower of noisome water into the first three rows of the audience. Stephanie’s costume split during curtain calls, baring her chest for the entire audience to see.
Even with Stephanie’s overexposure, the curtain call was accompanied by only the most perfunctory of applause. I had to believe that most of that came from Bill Pomeroy himself. And maybe his aged mother, who was sitting in the center of the front row, shivering in her now-damp blazer.
The cast was silent as they sponged off their makeup, as they peeled out of their costumes, as they returned to their anonymous street clothes. I heard one halfhearted suggestion that everyone go to Mephisto’s, but no one joined the chorus. The company trickled out in groups of two or three, their heads hung low.
No one was greeted at the stage door. Even friends and family texted messages that they’d see people at home, that they had to run, that vague, undefined emergencies had come up.
Bill Pomeroy was nowhere to be seen.
Drew lingered as the rest of the cast trickled away. I tried to ignore him, making myself extraordinarily busy as I supervised the crew mopping up the set, as we rolled up the plastic sheeting, as we applied hair dryers to the bottom of the iron frames in an attempt to retard their further rusting.
He finally gave up and slunk off, but not before I saw him slip a gold-wrapped package inside my backpack. Chocolate, my mind registered immediately, recognizing the classic lines of the box. Expensive chocolate. Expensive chocolate that no former boyfriend should be splurging on for me. My belly reminded me that it was empty, but I told it to hold on just a little longer.
I was switching off the lights in the dressing room when John materialized out of the gloom. “Hey,” I said, swinging my backpack over my shoulder. “Where have you been?”
“Talking to Bill.” He ran his hand across his face, smoothing down his mustache, leaving behind canyons of exhaustion.
“Where is he? The cast expected him to come in and say something.”
“He caught up with me after getting his mother into a cab.”
I heard something beneath John’s words, a confusing mix of anger, and frustration, all the negative emotions that had been swirling backstage since the audience’s ominous silence. But now there was another emotion as well.
Relief.
“What?” I asked. “What did Bill tell you?”
“He’s closing down the show.”
“What?” I asked again. I couldn’t believe that I’d heard right.
John sighed. “He’s going to announce that some flu bug got into the cast, that we don’t have enough understudies. He’s going to put the show ‘on hiatus’ until everyone has recovered.”
The blossom of hope that had started to unfurl shriveled. “And after the ‘hiatus?’”
John shook his head. “There won’t be any ‘after.’ The Landmark’ll stay dark for two months. If they’re lucky, they’ll manage to launch the next show a few weeks early. Try to recoup some costs there.”
I imagined the media flurry, the cyclone of theater gossip as news of our colossal failure spread. I thought about the pots of money that the Landmark would have to burn, the tickets they’d have to refund—at least to season subscribers who hadn’t had a choice about what horrific productions they’d be forced to see. I imagined the stacks of unpaid bills sitting on the producers’ desks, the invoices from the ironworkers, and the supertitle company, and everyone else who had been dragged into our little corner of artistic hell.
“I can’t believe he’s pulling the plug,” I said. “I can’t believe it’s over.” And then, the full import of John’s news hit me.
I was done.
No one else was ever going to see Romeo and Juliet. No one else was ever going to offer me the chance to stage-manage another play. I really was going to have to take the LSAT.
I started to cry.
“Aw, Franklin,” John said. His arms were strong around me. He pulled me close to his chest, made all of the appropriate shushing noises as my silent tears grew to sobs, expanded into great, gasping torrents of loss. I choked on my own hysterics, ashamed of myself, unable to stop. He smoothed my hair, ran his hands down my back, told me it was all going to be all right.
But he was wrong. It was never going to be right again. My life in the theater—the only life I’d ever wanted—was over.
At last, I managed to catch my breath. He pulled away enough to fish a handkerchief out of his pocket, and I ducked my head, imagining the mess of my swollen eyes and smeared makeup and slimy nose. He let me avoid his gaze, but he settled a steady hand on my arm, led me toward a handful of chairs that were scattered against the wall.
“I might as well tell you the rest of it,” he said.
I could tell from his tone that whatever he had to say, it was going to be worse than the failure of our show. It was going to be worse than my wasting my wishes on a career that I was never going to have.
He was going to tell me that he was gay. (Read: That he was a greater actor than everyone in our entire professional cast, combined.) He was going to say that he was married, that he had a perfect wife and two point four kids and a dog, all waiting for him back in Texas. He was going to announce a religious epiphany, a decision to move to an ashram half the world away.
He chewed on his lower lip for a minute, and then he said, “I’m heading to New York.”
“New York?” I croaked. My voice didn’t belong to me; it sounded like a cross between a frog and a dying goat. I sniffed and cleared my throat. “What’s in New York?” Of course, I knew what was in New York. Broadway. More theaters per block than anywhere else in the world. The “A” train. I swallowed hard and said, “What show?”
“A revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Big-name cast. Traditional staging.”
Even as my heart was breaking, I said, “No manhole covers?”
He grimaced. “Not one in sight.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought we’d have more time here. Another couple of weeks at least. Working until the scheduled opening.”
I couldn’t blame him. A lot could happen in a couple of weeks. A lot had happened in a couple of days. “Break a leg,” I said bravely, when the silence grew too loud.
“Come with me.”
I was knocked over by the crush of relief those three words sent through my body. I was lucky I was already sitting; my knees started shaking so badly that I could barely breathe. “I—”
He interrupted me before I could stammer out an answer. “I know this is fast. I know we barely know each other. But surviving nearly three months of Bill Pomeroy is like spending three years on any other play. I think—”
I finally dared to look at him, and the expression on my face must have dried the last words in his mouth. “I can’t,” I said. I shook my head, hardly believing what I was about to say. “I promised my father. I have obligations to my housemates. I can’t just pick up and leave. I can’t just… I can’t.”
If I hadn’t already shed enough tears to fill Lake Minnetonka, I might have started again. John waited for several heartbeats, as if he expected me to come to my senses, expected me to change my mind. When I just shook my head, though, he said, “I could only hope.” He shuddered, like a dog shaking off rainwater, and then he clambered to his feet. He looked over his shoulder at the chaos of the set. “We won’t start striking this thing until tomorrow. Can I give you a ride home?”
“I’ve got my car here.”
“I’ll follow you, then. Make sure you get there okay.”
I was too tired to protest. Instead, I collected my coat from the dressing room. I picked up my backpack. I looked around the theater, realizing that it would take us less than forty-eight hours to eradicate every last sign of the worst Romeo and Juliet known to man.
John held the door for me as we left the theater, and he blocked the wind as I locked up. But he kept his distance as we walked to our cars, merely nodding at the unlikely coincidence that we were parked next to each other, right in front of Club Joe’s.
I let myself into my own vehicle. I started my engine, giving it a minute or so to warm up. When I pulled into traffic, he followed me, silently, protectively. It was after midnight, and the city streets were quiet. We wove around Lake of the Isles in tandem, and I thought about changing my mind. I thought about asking him to come up to the apartment.
But what was the use? I’d lost my last chance at happiness in the theater. I wasn’t going to listen to the siren song of New York. I wasn’t going to imagine what life would be like on the Great White Way, how my career might prosper and grow beside John’s.
I was going to be a lawyer. I’d promised my father. We’d shaken on it.
John waited while I pulled into a parking space just a couple of car lengths from my driveway. I sank back into my seat, wanting to listen to the engine tick as it cooled, wanting to close my eyes and fall asleep and wish all of the crazy night away.
I knew, though, that he’d stay there until I got inside, safe and sound. That was the gentlemanly thing to do. That was John, all over.
I sighed and picked up my backpack from where I’d tossed it on the passenger seat. As I pulled it over the gearshift, a golden box tumbled to my feet. Drew’s expensive chocolate.
My stomach constricted, reminding me that it hadn’t been fed in ages. My fingers scrambled for the fabric ribbon that held the box closed. I fumbled for a chocolate, tossed it into my mouth like a starving woman. Which I was.
I bit down, already relishing the bittersweet melt across my tongue. I swallowed reflexively, and then I started to gag.
Alcohol. Liquor. Bourbon or rum or something that my taste buds had forgotten how to classify precisely.
My cheeks flushed even as I spat the last of the chocolate into John’s handkerchief, which I’d kept after my sobfest. My lips tingled, as if I’d swallowed a particularly unpleasant hot pepper. My throat started to itch.
Drew had given me liquor-filled chocolates. And I, completely distracted, had not even thought about testing the treat.
My reaction wasn’t life-threatening. I wasn’t collapsing in anaphylactic shock. I could head inside and pop a Benadryl and be fine in the morning.
But the searing of my reddened cheeks was the final nail in Juliet’s coffin.
I stumbled up the walk to the front door, swiping away fresh tears. I didn’t even bother to wave goodbye to John, although I heard him put his truck in gear, heard him drive away. I locked the door behind me quietly, praying that the Swensons wouldn’t think I was some sort of crafty burglar with a key.
I could hear voices upstairs, even before I turned the key in the apartment’s lock. Maddy and Jules fell silent, though, as I opened the door. They’d been laughing, but now they stared at me, pity stark across both of their faces. They hadn’t even been at the show, but they’d already heard about the disaster.
“Kira,” Jules said, but I only shook my head, heading directly into the bathroom.
I raided the medicine chest, found the antihistamines, then swallowed a couple of pink pills with water cupped in my hand. I took a minute to splash my face, shaking my head when I realized there was no way to hide that I’d been crying.
By the time I got back to the living room, I had pasted on a fake smile.
“Kira,” Jules said again, as perky as if she were greeting me for the first time that night. “Have you eaten?”
I glanced over at the dining room table and saw the collection of take-out containers from Hunan Delight. My stomach growled, but my tingling lips spoke of their own accord. All of my anger and frustration, all of my sorrow about the production, about John, about Drew, all of that negative emotion flowed over in a torrent of rage. My helpless fury was a flood directed at the two people who best understood me, best knew what I was going through. I screamed, “I don’t need you guys to tell me when to eat!”
“We just—” Maddy said, sitting up on the couch.
I shoved my hand into my backpack, ripped out my food diary with enough force that several pages tore away. “I’ve been writing down my food, okay? I’ve been recording every single bite! You can go ahead and read it! Go ahead and call my father! Want my phone? Want to call him right now? I made a promise to you guys, and I keep my promises! I always keep my promises!”
“Kira!” Maddy said, her voice severe enough that it shocked me into silence. “We just wanted to know if you were hungry. We were celebrating, and we saved some for you.”
I was shaking, but I managed to ask, “What could you possibly be celebrating?”
“We both got news tonight. Good news.”
I felt a little stupid, standing there with my torn food diary, and my stomach grumbling loudly enough that I was certain they both could hear. Without a word, Maddy pushed herself off the couch and started piling food onto a plate. As I stared like a sleepwalker, she carried my dinner over to the microwave.
Jules filled the awkward silence by saying, “We heard about your show.”
“Who told you?” I asked, consciously deciding to let exhaustion replace my outrage.
Jules cast a quick look at her coconspirator. “We got a few phone calls.” Great. The rumor mill must have tied up every cell tower in the Twin Cities. The triple beep of the microwave spared me the need to reply. I crossed to the table and accepted the plate that Maddy put in front of me. The Hunan chicken was heaven in my mouth, and I barely resisted the urge to swallow an entire carton of rice without chewing.
“Yeah,” I said after I’d downed another three bites. “So much for my brilliant Landmark debut.”
Before I could say anything else, Jules passed me a glass of water. The diamond twinkling on her finger rivaled the one that Stephanie Michaelson had shown off at Mephisto’s.
“Oh my God!” I said, nearly knocking the water to the floor as I grabbed her hand. “Justin finally proposed?”
Jules’s teeth flashed white in a perfect smile. “They voted him in as partner, tonight. He came by as soon as he had the news.”
Maddy rolled her eyes. “You missed it, Kira. He was down on one knee, holding out the ring, asking for her hand, the whole traditional thing. The four of us cheered so loudly that Mr. Swenson came upstairs.”
I made a face, even as I continued chewing. Mr. Swenson could live with one night of noise. Jules had been waiting for this night for years. “Wait,” I said, swallowing. “The four of you?”
Jules raised her eyebrows, clearly instructing Maddy to continue. For the first time since I’d met her, though, my bluff friend was silent. Instead, Maddy was suddenly fascinated by the edge of a cloth napkin. She rolled it between her blunt fingers, then smoothed it flat, repeating the process as if it could capture the mysteries of the universe.
“Who?” I said at last, snatching the napkin away. “Who else was here?”
“Gunther,” Maddy said softly.
“Herr Wunderbar,” Jules reminded me helpfully.
“Oh!” I couldn’t help but look at the whiteboard calendar in the kitchen. A disbelieving tally, and I heard myself say, “What is it? Almost three months?”
Maddy’s eyes were shining, even as her face crinkled in annoyance. “It’s not like that’s so unbelievable.”
Jules answered before I could clear my mouth of chicken and vegetables. “Yes, it is. Three months in Maddy time is like three years in an ordinary relationship.”
The food turned to sawdust in my mouth.
That was practically the same thing that John had said to me. Three months. Three years.
I pushed my plate away.
Maddy glared at Jules, but then she laughed and said, “I’m going to New York with him. With Gunther. People are already talking about the work he’s doing for Shakespeare in the Park. He’s got lots of offers, all sorts of possibilities. And I’ll find work, too.”
I knew what I was supposed to say. I knew what I was supposed to do. Years of living in the theater came to my rescue. I responded perfectly. “Maddy!” I said. “I’m so happy for you!”
New York. With the man of her dreams. Perfect.
And Jules and Justin were getting married. Perfect, too.
And I’d be left alone, living above the Swensons in an apartment I couldn’t afford. Looking for strangers to be my housemates. Studying for the LSAT. Preparing for law school. Getting ready for my life as a lawyer.
“I’m so happy,” I said again. “For both of you!”
“And to celebrate,” Maddy said, “we have our fortune cookies!” She presented the cellophane-wrapped treats on a plate. “I waited until you were here, Kira.”
“What a sacrifice,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
Jules opened hers first. “Everything will now come your way,” she read. The light glinted off her engagement ring as she set the curl of paper on the table. “Hopefully only good things!” She laughed.
Maddy looked toward me, but I nodded for her to open her own cookie. “You are filled with life’s most precious treasure—hope!” She made a face. “I’m filled with Eight Treasures Chicken, but that’s close enough, I guess.”
Jules laughed. “I hope Gunther wasn’t attracted to your ability to think in abstract terms.”
Maddy grunted. “I’m a lighting designer. Not a philosopher.” She turned to me. “Come on, Kira. Open yours.”
I was tired of the game, weary of the lighthearted banter. But I wasn’t going to argue; there was no reason to fight. Better to get all of this best-friend camaraderie over. Finished. So that I could retreat to my bedroom and collapse into sleep.
I tore open the wrapper, broke the cookie into two neat halves. I cleared my throat as I unfolded the slip of paper. “You are going on a journey,” I read. Unanticipated tears blurred my vision. More tears. How could I have any tears left? “Whoops, Maddy. I must have gotten yours by mistake.” I shoved the fortune toward her, along with the broken crescent of my cookie.
I heard the shakiness in my voice. I knew that they could hear it, too. That’s what best friends were for, after all. But I didn’t have time for social niceties. I didn’t have time to be polite. I had to get away from them, away from their happiness, away from their sickening, perfect lives.
I said, “I’m even more tired than I thought. I have got to get to sleep. I’ll see you both in the morning.”
And because they were my best friends, they pretended to believe me. They let me escape down the hall toward my bedroom.
Before I could sequester myself away, I saw the flurry of sticky notes attached to my door. Jules’s neat handwriting. Maddy’s forceful notes. “Drew called.” “Drew called again.” “Drew.”
I tore them off the door and crumpled them into a ball as I threw myself onto my bed.
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. I wanted to tell Bill Pomeroy that he had ruined my life. I wanted to swaddle myself in my baggy black sweatshirts, my shapeless black sweatpants, the disguises that had protected me during my year of mourning Norman. I wanted to scream at Drew, to tell him that he didn’t love me, that he’d never loved me, that it was all a horrible lie.
I rubbed at my face, trying to scrub away the last of the alcohol-induced itch. The rubbing only irritated me more, though, and I forced myself to fold my hands in front of my eyes, almost as if I were praying.
A golden glint caught my attention.
I opened up my hands, turned my wrists in the overhead light. Unbelievably, I could still make out the shape of golden flames, the glitter of the tattoos that should have faded weeks before.
I scrambled onto the floor, swiping my hand beneath my bed until I found the abandoned brass lantern. It was warm to my touch. Warmer than any metal had a right to be in Minnesota, in March.
I caught my breath and squeezed my thumb to my forefinger, pressing as hard as I could. “Teel,” I said, working hard to keep the single syllable even, firm. As if I believed my genie would appear.
Fog flowed out of the lantern—emerald and cobalt and ruby and topaz. I caught a shriek against the back of my teeth, dropped the lamp onto my bed. I staggered back a couple of steps, unable to believe my eyes as a body solidified out of the mist.
Teel looked like the lawyer I dreaded becoming. Her sleek blond hair was cut in a neat bob that curled perfectly at her jawline. She wore a white blouse and a navy suit, the skirt cut an inch or two below her knee. Her legs were encased in silky stockings, and her ankles were steady in sensible pumps. She gripped a briefcase in her right hand, as if I’d summoned her just as she was about to walk into court.
Only the ring of flames tattooed around her wrist broke the stolid, boring image.
“Teel?” I whispered.
“At last!” she said. “I thought you were never going to call me back here. Are you ready to make your last wish?”