A short silence. Then Natalya Bazhenova says to me, “What do you think?”
I look at the blank space in the air, where my fingers hover over an imaginary chalkboard. I scrutinize an imaginary equation. “It’s beautiful,” I say. “It’s beautiful work.”
“So you see why I had to go? Why I had to resume my research?”
“No, I don’t. But it is still beautiful work.” Letting the imaginary chalk drop, I turn around. The lights won’t be set for two weeks, so all the brights are on too high. I squint into them.
Natalya approaches me. “Do you want me to show you the rest?” she asks, making me thirsty with imaginary want. “I could try to find a way,” she says. “I could go back and ask the other professors if you could join us at the university. I could—”
“Mama?” says a voice. I turn stage left. My character’s daughter enters. “I did it,” she says. “I made dinner. And—and we are all waiting for you at home.”
I study the sight: the lines of my daughter’s face painted a harsh white by the stage light. “Thank you, sweetheart,” I say mechanically. I turn back to Natalya. “No,” I say. “I can’t go with you.”
“But—”
“I won’t go,” I say, defeat filling the words. After a long second, I follow my daughter off left. Natalya stares after us.
“And lights down,” García calls. “Great. Everyone, onstage.”
We sit on the edge of the stage, the rest of the cast talking and joking. The guy who plays my husband flirts with Emily, who doesn’t seem to realize it. I sit off to the side, as far as possible from the girls I yelled at. I shouldn’t have snapped—I know it’s García’s job, telling them to be quiet—but it maddens me, people not having the basic decency to shut up during rehearsals.
García runs over his notes from the scenes we worked today. “Kat,” he says finally, “what do you think the play’s ending means?”
The rest of the cast looks at me. I feel the eleven pairs of eyes like spotlights. I shrug, avoiding their gazes. “I lose,” I say. “My character loses. She’s been at home waiting fifteen years for her teacher to come back, and by the time it happens, she has this kid to raise, so, like . . . you know. She can’t chase her passion. She loses.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” García says, dashing off a note on the clipboard. “I want you to rethink that. And I want you to rethink the apology thing from earlier. Okay?”
I nod, almost relieved to have notes for once. Usually García spends so long fixing people’s blocking, he doesn’t get to characterization.
His questions baffle me, though. How could I want anything but an apology from Emily’s character, after a decade and a half? And of course I lose at the end. My character’s dream goes out the window, and she’s saddled with a life she never wanted.
García tucks his clipboard into his satchel. “Kat, thanks for being off-book already. The rest of you, remember to off-book those last few scenes by Thursday. Nice work, everyone.”
I hop off the stage, hurrying out the side door ahead of the others. I jog down the grass of the hill, squinting into the sunset. I’m still not used to the sun setting so early thanks to daylight savings, which doesn’t seem to save much daylight at all. Though maybe that’s because we’re locked in school buildings until sunset.
Crossing the parking lot toward the street, I pass Juniper Kipling’s empty Mercedes, a shimmering foreigner in the crowd of scuffed Jeeps and mud-splattered pickup trucks. Weird—I thought Juniper was driving my sister home today.
As I reach the sidewalk, I stick my hands deep in my pockets, steeling myself for the journey. It’s not a long way home—two miles, maybe—but it’s getting cold these days. Soon I’ll have to start asking people for rides after rehearsal. I dread the awkward car conversations already.
No matter what, when I talk to people, I come off as an asshole. They should leave me alone, for their sake as much as mine. Whenever someone breaks my privacy, my head fills with panic, panic, panic. I lose my thoughts in white noise and fuzz. A short, sizzling fuse. And what comes out of my mouth is always angry bullshit.
Life is better when it’s scripted.