“I’ll explain everything in person,” Bob says. “Can you be here in twenty minutes?”
I throw on some clothes, and my mind starts spinning as I trudge across campus in the early-morning quiet. Have they decided the fire is my fault after all? Am I about to get kicked out of Allerdale? If I am, at least I went out on a high note, plus my parents will never know I wasn’t really cast in Birdie. Maybe this is for the best. Then again, leaving Allerdale three weeks early means leaving Zoe three weeks early, and I’m not sure I can stand that. We’ve barely had any time to be together.
I push into the main office, ready to plead my case, and find Russell sitting outside Bob’s closed office door. “Hey,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. They told me to come in as quickly as I could. What are you doing here?”
“Same.”
I sit down next to him. “Do you think we’re in trouble?”
“What? No. Why would we be?”
“I mean, Bob said the hazer burned down the theater, and we’re the ones who used it last, right? So doesn’t that kind of make it our fault?”
“We didn’t know it was broken,” Russell says. “If we hadn’t used it, they would’ve turned it on for Dreamgirls today, and the same thing would’ve happened. Right?”
“I guess.” I pick at the hem of my shorts. “Tell me something weird to distract me?”
“A group of weasels is called a boogle,” he says. “Everyone has a unique tongue print. The largest recorded snowflake was fifteen inches across. Is this helping?”
“Not really. But I do love the word ‘boogle.’?”
The office door opens, and Bob sticks his head out and beams at us. “You made it! Come in, come in.” He certainly doesn’t seem angy with us, but I can’t imagine why we’d be here unless we’re in trouble. I take a deep breath and follow Russell inside.
Bob’s office is cluttered and cheerful, the walls crowded with framed Allerdale show posters and children’s drawings. Barb and Marcus are seated on either side of the desk, and the third-rotation stage managers, Lauren and Magdalena, are crammed into narrow folding chairs against one of the walls. Russell and I sit down in the two remaining seats, and Bob boosts himself up onto his desk like a little kid and plunks down right on top of a pile of papers. I see the word “INSURANCE” poking out from under his thigh.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve called you here,” he says.
“Yeah,” Russell says, at the same time that I blurt out, “Are you kicking us out?”
Bob laughs. “No, of course not! Far from it. We have a proposal for you, actually. You two were the brains behind A Midsummer Night’s Dreamgirls, correct?”
I nod. “I mean, the cast helped. But yeah, we wrote pretty much all of it.”
“Wonderful. As you know, we’re in a bit of a bind right now. We’re down a performance space, but we can’t cancel any of the actors’ contracts or shorten the run of either Birdie or Macbeth. We considered trying to run the shows in repertory in Legrand, but we don’t have the resources or the crew to do that many changeovers. So we wondered if the two of you might be interested in helping us create a new show, one in which the actors from both casts could perform.”
We’re both silent for a minute, and then Russell says, “Wait. You want us to write another mash-up?”
“Precisely! A full-length one, this time. We were thinking the original Macbeth actors could perform most of Shakespeare’s text as planned, and you two could rewrite all the lyrics to the songs from Birdie to fit in with Shakespeare’s story. Whenever it was time for a song, the Macbeth actors would leave the stage, and identically dressed Birdie actors would take their places and sing. That way, everyone can be included, and everyone can play to their strengths.”
“It’s not a perfect solution, of course,” Marcus says. He’s obviously disgusted by the whole idea.
“But it’s the best one we can think of on short notice,” Bob says. “What do you two think?”
Russell and I look at each other, and the stunned expression on his face mirrors my feelings exactly. This whole Shakespeare-musical mash-up thing was supposed to be a silly joke. And now this is happening?
Bob must take our silence for reluctance, because he starts talking again. “We wouldn’t be able to compensate you properly for all your hard work, and I’m sorry about that, but we can offer you a small stipend. And you’d be released from any prior obligations, of course—crew calls and assistantships and whatnot. We’d need you in rehearsals full-time.”
“I’d get to withdraw from Se?or Hidalgo’s Circus of Wonders?” I ask.
“Do you have a large role?”
I sneak a glance at Russell, and we both bite back a laugh. “Replacing me shouldn’t be a problem,” I answer.