“Why don’t I show you?” Camilo said, turning to the monitor in the prompt corner. “Voilà.”
Wren gasped as the lights came up. It wasn’t the hot, sweltering yellow we were used to, but bright dazzling white. We blinked, blinded, until our eyes adjusted. Then Meredith pointed upward and said, “Look!”
Overhead, between the backdrop mirror and the grand drape (where normally there were only a few bare battens and long vines of rope), a million tiny fiber-optic cables hung, burning bright blue like stars. The mirror beneath everyone’s feet had been transformed to an endless night sky.
“Go on,” Camilo said to me. “I promise it’s safe.”
I obediently inched out of the wings and set my foot down, worried it would simply go through the floor and I would plummet. But the mirror was there, deceptively solid. I walked gingerly to center stage where my classmates stood in a tight little group, alternately looking up and down, faces slack with amazement.
“They’ve done actual constellations,” Filippa said. “That’s Draco.” She pointed, and James followed her gaze. I glanced down toward the Bridge, where another line of fiber-optic wires hung from the ceiling in the house.
“Trippy,” Alexander said, softly.
Below us, our reflections stretched down into a starry abyss. My stomach rolled unpleasantly.
“Take your time,” Camilo said. “Walk around. Get used to moving on a three-dimensional floor.”
The others dispersed, drifting quietly away from me, like ripples on the surface of the lake. I realized, with a funny little jolt behind my solar plexus, that this was what it reminded me of: the lake in middle winter, before freezing, the vast black sky reflected like a portal to another universe. I closed my eyes, feeling seasick.
The last few weeks had passed in a whirl and rush, time sometimes moving so slowly it was unbearable, sometimes so fast that it was impossible to catch our breath. We had become a small colony of insomniacs. Outside of classes and rehearsals, Wren rarely left her room, but more often than not the light stayed on all night. Alexander, once released from the hospital, spent two hours every week with a nurse and the school shrink, and lived under threat of expulsion should he put another toe out of line. In the Castle he was constantly observed by Colin and Filippa as he suffered through withdrawal. They suffered with him—watching, worrying, not sleeping. I slept fitfully, at strange hours, and never for very long. When I spent the night downstairs with Meredith she lay cool and quiet beside me, but always kept one hand on my arm or my back or my chest while she read (sometimes for hours without ever turning a page), perhaps just to be certain I was there. If I couldn’t sleep in one room, I crept to the other. James was a fickle companion. Sometimes we lay on our opposite beds in companionable quiet. Sometimes he tossed and muttered in his sleep. Other nights, when he thought I was already dreaming, he slid out of bed, took his coat and shoes, and disappeared into the dark outside. I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.
I still saw Richard, almost nightly, more often than not in the undercroft. Blood leaked out from underneath the locker door, and when I opened it I found him crushed inside, red dripping from his nose and eyes and mouth. But he was no longer the only player in my oneiric repertory; Meredith and James had both joined the company, cast sometimes as my lovers, sometimes my enemies, sometimes in scenes so chaotic that I couldn’t tell which. Worst of all, sometimes they clashed with each other and seemed not to see me at all. In my subconscious dramas they, like violence and intimacy, became somehow interchangeable. More than once I woke with a guilty start, unable to remember which bedroom I was in, who else’s breath stirred softly in the silence.
I opened my eyes, and my own vertiginous reflection stared up at me. My cheeks were gaunt, my skin blotchy with fading bruises. I lifted my head, looked from one friend to another. Alexander had made his way to the end of the Bridge and sat staring out at the empty house. Meredith stood at the very edge of the stage, looking down into the orchestra pit, like a jumper contemplating suicide. Wren, a few paces behind her, put one foot carefully in front of the other, arms outstretched, tightrope walking. Filippa had retreated to the left wing; her face was turned up toward Camilo, who had leaned close to whisper something without interrupting the lull.
I found James standing against the backdrop, one arm outstretched, palm to palm with his own reflection, his eyes slate blue in the cold cosmic light.
I shifted and my shoes squeaked on the mirror. James turned and caught my eye. But I stayed where I was, afraid to move toward him, afraid I might lose my footing on solid ground, detach from what had anchored me before and drift out into the void of space—a vagabond, wandering moon.
SCENE 2
Our first performance of Lear went smoothly enough. Posters done in white and midnight blue had appeared on every blank wall on campus and in town. One version showed a white-robed Frederick, Wren limp and unmoving at his feet. Beneath that:
COME NOT BETWEEN THE DRAGON AND HIS WRATH
On the other, James stood alone on the Bridge, sword at his side, a bright spot in the darkness. A few of the Fool’s wise words were scattered among the stars reflected under him:
TRUST NOT IN THE TAMENESS OF THE WOLF