“I’m Dana Solomon. You can call me Solomon. Grab a piece of the plot from the folder, and let me know if you have questions, okay?”
I don’t know what a plot is, but I pull out a slip of paper, hoping there’ll be instructions on it or something. But all I see is a bunch of symbols, boxes and circles and slashes and shapes that look like little milk bottles. I can only tell which is the top because of the heading, which says “MID-GAL R” in block letters.
“Um,” I say. “I’m really sorry, but I don’t know what any of this means.”
“You ever seen a light plot before?”
“Not really, no.”
“No tech requirement for actors at your school, huh?”
“I’m still in high school,” I say. I can practically see Solomon suppressing an eye-roll, but it’s not my fault I don’t know how to do this. I didn’t come to Allerdale to do lighting.
“Do you have tools?”
“No,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was going to be—”
“Zach!” Solomon yells, and the guy who was bumming cigarettes turns around. “Brooklyn’s with you today. Get her a wrench, okay?”
Zach doesn’t even try to hide his exasperation. “Fine,” he says. “Come on.”
He leads me into a small, cluttered room he calls the “LX office,” tells me to leave my bag on the ratty couch, and hands me a wrench. “Tie that off,” he says. “There are tie line spools all over the place.” I have no idea what any of those words mean, but I don’t want to look like an idiot, so I nod. Zach seems to be carrying his wrench in his back pocket, so that’s where I stick mine. I’m not wearing a belt, and my shorts immediately start to fall down on one side.
“Which piece of the plot do you have?” he asks.
“Um…” I look at the piece of paper clutched in my hand, now slightly damp from my nervous sweat. “Mid-gal R?”
“Mid-gallery, stage right. Okay, we’ll do that first.” Zach leads me onto the stage and points to a metal balcony about twenty-five feet in the air. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“No,” I say. Finally, a question I have the right answer to.
“Good.” He looks at the paper for a minute. “Okay, we need three Source Four thirty-sixes, three twenty-sixes, and a nineteen. Let’s go.” I trot along behind him, hoping this is going to start making sense soon.
Source Fours turn out to be big black lights with clamps attached to the tops. We cart them up a narrow, winding, metal staircase; Zach carries four at a time, but I’m barely able to manage two. The floor of the mid-gallery is a metal grid, and I can see what’s happening on the stage below my feet. It’s a little disconcerting, and I feel a tiny wave of vertigo, but I don’t say anything.
I watch Zach hang one of the lights, and it looks pretty easy—slip the clamp over the bar, attach this thin piece of metal he calls a safety cable, tighten the bolt with the wrench. “That doesn’t look too hard,” I tell him cheerfully.
He looks at me like, How did I get stuck with this moron? “It’s not,” he says. “Put a twenty-six there and a thirty-six here, okay?”
“Sure.” I heft one of the lights up onto the bar. “So, where are you from?”
“Chapel Hill,” Zach says.
I dig my wrench out of my pocket. “I’ve never been. Do you go to UNC? I’ve heard it’s really—”
And that’s when the wrench slips out of my hand and falls through the grid in the floor.
“Heads!” Zach bellows at the top of his lungs, and everyone on the ground ducks and takes a step back. The wrench smacks the stage floor with an enormous bang about five feet from Courtney, who looks up and shouts, “What the fuck, dude!”
“I’m so sorry!” I yell back.
Courtney shakes her head. I’m too high up to clearly hear what she says, but I’m pretty sure it’s something like, “Figures.”
Zach wheels on me. “What the hell was that? I told you to tie your wrench off!”
“I’m so sorry,” I repeat. It seems like those are the only words I’m going to get to say today. “I didn’t know what that meant.”
“Jesus. If you don’t know what something means, you ask! She could’ve ended up with a fractured skull! I know you’re used to flouncing around and listening to people clap for you, but what we do up here isn’t a game. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say, and I’m suddenly afraid I’m going to burst into tears.
Zach pulls a knife out of his belt and flips it open, and for a second I have this crazy thought that he’s going to stab me and get rid of me once and for all. But instead he storms over to a spool of thin black rope, cuts off a piece, and hands it to me. “This is tie line,” he says, like he’s speaking to someone who might not understand English. “Tie one end to your wrench and the other end to your belt loop. Don’t ever let that happen again.”
“I won’t,” I choke out.