Two minutes later Reach’s head pops over the side of the rail.
“That was a close call,” he says.
“Thanks for bailing me out.”
“Where there is a sinking boat, there will always be Rishekesh.”
It pisses me off that Reach is always trying to save me. The worst part is that I kind of need saving.
“So what happened up there?” Reach says.
“I froze.”
“Because of Derek? He’s all sound and fury.”
“Not Derek. The blackout.”
“That again,” Reach says.
He takes a long breath, gives me the I’m worried about you look. My mother has the same look. I hate that look.
When we were ten, Reach and I made a pact that we would tell each other everything. There would be no secrets between us. It’s one of those agreements kids make all the time and then forget about six months later.
Only we never forgot.
So Reach knows me really well. He knows about the dream, about what happens to me in the dark.
“I thought it was getting better,” he says.
“I thought so, too,” I say.
It’s getting worse. But I don’t say that. I don’t want to worry him.
Reach thinks about it for a second, one thick eyebrow raised high on his forehead.
“It’s no big deal,” he says. “You’re under a lot of pressure. A show going into tech, Derek breathing down your hole—”
“What if I freak out during a show?” I say.
“You won’t.”
“But what if I do?”
“It’s just fear,” Reach says. “We all have fears.”
“Except you.”
“Not true. I have fears.”
“Like what?”
“Like shrinkage. And my mother.”
Reach’s mom is a total control freak. Their house is like a supermax prison, only the food is spicier.
“I’ll keep an eye on you,” Reach says. “And if you need anything …”
Reach wiggles his cell phone in my direction.
“I’ll call,” I say.
“Promise?” he says.
“Promise.”
But what am I going to do? Call Reach in the middle of the night and tell him I’m having a bad dream?
“I can’t afford to lose you,” Reach says. “Who would tell me his problems?”
“Half Crack has lots of problems.”
Half Crack is a crew guy who never wears a belt. When he bends over, the room clears out.
“He’s got little boy problems,” Reach says. “I need man issues. Hard-core crises. Something I can sink my teeth into.”
I look away, busying myself with a lamp change.
“What was the deal with the blackout?” Reach says.
“Derek has too much stuff in the air. He’s maxing out the dimmer packs.”
“Why don’t you tell him?”
“I did tell him. He said to make it work, so I’m making it work.”
“Go over his head,” Reach says.
“I like my job, limited and lowly though it may be.”
I know better than to get between Derek and his ambitions. Tech crew is paved with the bodies of techies who tried it.
“You should be designing this show,” Reach says.
“Let’s not go there,” I say.
I glance down, making sure nobody’s below to overhear us.
Reach says, “If it weren’t for his father, Derek would still be backstage coiling cable with the rest of us.”
“His father didn’t get him the production designer position,” I say.
“Yeah, but it sure didn’t hurt. Think about it from Mr. Apple’s perspective. You give a kid with a famous father a big job, then the father comes to see the show, you buddy up to him a little—”
“And what? You get a job at his architecture firm?”
“No, you ask him to introduce you to some of his famous theater friends. Or you make him a patron. Or whatever. You don’t know much about kissing ass, do you?”
“I know nothing.”
Reach gets this look on his face, the one he gets when he’s brewing up a plan.
“I’d love to take Derek down a couple notches,” he says softly. “What would happen if we stopped covering his ass?”
“He’d burn down the theater.”
“Is that so bad?”
“It depends how many people are in it.”
“What if it were freshmen?” Reach says. “Or better yet, freshman actors.”
“That’s terrible,” I say, but I laugh a little. Reach hates actors even more than he hates freshmen. And he hates his mother more than either of them.
“I sense an evil plan coming together,” I say.
“It could be our evil plan. Like the old days,” Reach says.
Reach and I used to think up all kinds of plots when we were kids. Once we stole three tubes of paint from my dad and painted Reach’s dog. Actually, it was Reach’s mom’s dog. Reach was grounded for three months after that, and he had to go to Hindi school on the weekends.
“Remember when we painted my mom’s dog?” Reach says.
I laugh. “I was just thinking about that.”
“So what do you say we take on the Big Bad Brit together?”
I wish I could talk to my brother Josh right now. This is the kind of thing he knows all about—when to push forward and when to retreat. But he’s at Cornell and impossible to get ahold of.
Reach is still looking at me, waiting for an answer.
“I’ll try repatching some of the circuits, distribute the load,” I say. “It might hold if Derek doesn’t keep adding things.”
“So that’s a no from you,” he says.
“It’s a no.”
“How do we turn it into a yes?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation again,” I say. Because we’ve had this conversation a thousand times. Reach tries to get me to hang out with the guys; I say no. Reach plans for us to meet girls at some techie party in Paramus; I say no. Reach comes up with a crazy plan and I say no.
Reach throws up his hands like he’s surrendering.
But he never surrenders. Not really.