The Truth About Fragile Things (35 page)

“Tonight we all shine.”

I found Charlotte across the circle, her arm straight and straining to meet Phillip’s hand high over his head, her expression frozen with determination and dread. Forgetting myself for a moment, I crossed the room. I never took my eyes off her carefully braided hair, wearing the costume that she had not wanted Callie to make. “You look great. Are you okay?” I whispered.

She jerked her head into a nod, her lips set too firm to crack open for words.

“Charlotte, you can do this. Remember, you’re too good for them.” It had worked once, but not now. Her eyes shot around the room and I knew she had lost her ability to act superior. I closed my hand softly around her arm and lowered my face close to hers, just the way my mother had for me. “Phillip will be right there next to you. I’ll be watching. We won’t let you fall.”

Her lashes blinked, her eyes registered the quiet tones of my voice. She swallowed and I turned her around and pressed my hand gently to her back. “Your fans await,” I whispered. “I’ll be one of them. Okay?”

She spun around, her eyes shining with questions and doubts. For a moment I thought she would hug me, but I don’t think her arms were working yet. “Megan, I don’t want you to do this anymore.”

“I of all people know that sometimes choices are made for us,” I answered.

“Come on, Charlotte, let’s get your mic on.” A boy on the sound crew pointed to the door.

She still didn’t move or look away from me. “I would have never done this. You’re the only person…” Instead of finishing her sentence she gave an angry sigh and followed the boy out of the room

I didn’t realize Phillip had stuck around until his hands clamped onto my shoulders and he marched me away from listening ears. “I don’t like choosing like this,” he said as if we were fighting. “I don’t like that you gave up your part. Why does it have to be you or her all the time? I think we already fulfilled this part of the list.” I tried to protest but he spoke over me. “You didn’t even talk to me about it.” The hurt in his eyes surprised me.

“I thought you would agree. I thought you realized she had to do more than just a rehearsal.”

His hands were still locked on me, hot and large. “I don’t like it. These are the moments I hate you.”

“Phillip, this is all I have.” The room was empty, but one boy signaled Phil anxiously through the window on the door. I spoke faster. “After all I took, this is all I have to give her. I didn’t teach her how to hike. I didn’t start the campfires. I didn’t make the stars fall. I know how to act and I can give her this chance. That’s it. It’s a pretty bad trade for a dad.”

His stern grip relaxed and I took my wrist back.

“I hate you for it, and love you for it,” he said. I didn’t move, confused by how much he could feel and express and contradict himself in less than a minute. He gathered me into a hug. “Thank you.”

“I thought you were mad,” I responded stiffly.

“I need you and Charlotte to come with me right after it’s over tonight. We’re going somewhere and it’s important. For the list. Okay?”

“More important than pie with the rest of the cast?” I asked in my deadpan voice so he knew I wasn’t serious.

“Don’t talk. You’re losing your voice, remember?” He pressed his face to mine, his lips just overlapping the smallest corner of my mouth. I closed my eyes, feeling his cheek beneath my fragile lashes. When he let go my chest throbbed with something that wasn’t love or lust or regret, but it was tinted with all three. It was goodbye.

He left the room and through the window I saw the lights in the foyer flicker to warn the audience they had five minutes to return to their seats. I pushed my hand against my collarbone, wishing I could run onto the stage and pour everything inside of me into Belinda and make her hold it for an hour. I reached out to the light switches, and one by one, flicked the room into darkness. As soon as I was alone with the black shadows of chairs and the piano I imagined Braden in the booth, his assistants busy beside him, his headphones full of Schatz’s harried instructions.

There was no seat in the auditorium for me. The show sold out weeks ago. I could stand at the back with the tripods and cameras of proud parents or watch from the wings backstage. Neither felt right. I wandered the hall until I built up the courage to approach the door to the sound booth. Quietly, I entered and gripped the rail of the spiral stairs as I ascended. When I got to the top the door was open. Braden and his assistants spun around, eyebrows tilted in confusion.

“Do you need something?” one of the boys asked. I looked past him to the bird’s eye view of the stage and busy auditorium, struck by the quiet of the room when the world below stirred with life.

“No,” I whispered, trying not to let them see my voice was fine.

Braden studied me for long enough I thought he was going to leave me to explain everything, to look like a fool. Just when I started to despair, he opened his mouth. “Megan, do you want to watch from up here?”

“Do you mind?”

“You can have that seat right there.” He pointed with his eyes to a metal stool pushed against the back wall. And then he stood up and pulled the stool into the corner, close to the window. Close to him. “Okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” I replied, feeling anything but. I made myself so still and silent the other crew members forgot about me in minutes. What I couldn’t understand were the vibrations running through my arms, trembling in my stomach. I’d never felt nerves like that sitting backstage. The curtains rippled open. Braden and the other boys grew intense, their scripts open, their fingers rolling through the control boards, their ears strained, listening for any mistakes they might have to help cover. Occasionally Braden murmured quick answers into his microphone and I knew Schatz was asking him questions. I’d never realized how much she relied on him. How much every person on the stage relied on him.

When Charlotte appeared I took a deep breath and wished for binoculars so I could see if her chin shook the way it does when she’s scared. I was so frightened during her first lines that I couldn’t tell if she said them well or not. Braden flipped the microphone below his chin and gave my leg a fast touch. “She’s fine,” he promised me and I wondered how he knew that was what I needed to hear.

I pulled my arms around my chest to still the shaking behind my ribs. When his fingers fell on me I felt like his guitar, strummed and singing. I watched Phillip on the stage, could hear some of the laughter of the audience even through the sound proofing. When he smiled I felt his lips brushing mine.

I’d never felt so separate from it all. Never thought of how silly and contrived it was—some pieces of timber, some lines in a script, a costume and makeup, and we feel like stars. And now from my high perch beside Braden I looked down at the stars, sad that in some small way, they had fallen for me, their magic distant and dimmed.

When we made it to intermission I knew we were golden. Charlotte glowed, Phillip played, and the rest of the cast caught the excitement. Braden asked his assistants to go do mic checks backstage and we were left alone in the room lit only by one light strip across the control board where they could read their scripts. My first impulse was to wish Braden would flirt, like Phillip. It’s so much easier when it’s meaningless and thoughtless.

“Is it always like this?” I gathered my courage and parted the silence that felt like a curtain strung between us. “Do we always look so small?”

I heard Phillip’s imaginary answer before I heard Braden’s.
You always look beautiful
. For a moment I wished thinking the words would make them fall out of Braden’s mouth.

“You’re not sick,” he murmured.

“I know,” I whispered.

He spun his rolling chair toward me, looked up at me as I sat on the tall stool. “Then why did you step down for Charlotte? I don’t get it.”
And I don’t like it
, his tone said.

“It is a long story.”

“It’s a long intermission. They can’t go back in until I turn the lights down.” His serious mouth flickered into a smile and back again.

When I inhaled the breath was chilled with shock. I was going to tell him. A boy who didn’t know one real thing about me and I was going to tell him my oldest secret. I tried to protest, but some dormant, unrecognizable part of me was already speaking. “Charlotte Exby doesn’t have a dad. He died when she was just a baby.”

Braden’s frown intensified and his eyes furrowed. We both waited to see if there was more. “So you just felt bad for her?” he pushed gently.

I shook my head, locked my hands together to hide the shivering, but it didn’t work. The trembling went up my arms. When the door to the room started to open Braden leapt from his chair and slammed it closed with such force that I jerked in my seat, backing farther into the corner. His assistants gave cries of surprise.

“Go away for five more minutes,” he ordered through the door as he turned the lock. The knob jiggled and they knocked loudly but Braden repeated himself. “Five minutes. We’re talking.”

“Just let them in,” I said weakly, my hand pressed to my chest. “What will they think?”

“They’re fine and who cares,” he said and turned back to me, approached softly. “Are you cold?” He swept off his black hoodie and handed it to me.

Normally I would have refused, but my shivering made it impossible. I pulled my arms into it, soaking up the warmth he’d left behind. He stood close now and our minutes were numbered. My stomach lurched with a sudden wish. I wished he would close the small gap and kiss me. Not like Phillip. Not a quasi-kiss he could deny later, but a real one, in every way intentional. I wondered if the wish showed in my eyes. I hoped it did and he acted on it.

But Braden held as still as I do when I am trying not to make Charlotte run and waited, unmoved by my silent request.

“I didn’t feel bad for her. It was something I had to do because of what I owe her. Her dad died to save me. He was a total stranger and he saved me from being hit by a car when I was two.”

One last shiver convulsed through me and then my limbs went quiet, frozen, like the wanderer in the snow whose body stops trying to fight the cold and accepts its fate.

One of the boys knocked on the door again, but Braden ignored it. “You gave her your part because her dad saved you?” He said it so low and flat I couldn’t read the emotion. “He died?”

I nodded my head once, wishing his arms were still in the jacket wrapped around me. He was quiet too long. “Braden, please don’t tell. I don’t want people to think of me that way—like someone who killed someone else.”

“I won’t,” he promised, drawing the word out. Quietly processing the horrible truth. The boys knocked again and Braden sighed. “Can we talk after the play?”

I wanted to stay for hours. I wanted the entire auditorium to empty and for Braden and me to stay and talk in this quiet room in the abandoned school until we ran out of words. But there were promises. “I wish I could, but I can’t. I have to go somewhere with Phillip and Charlotte.”

I thought I registered a sting in his eyes but he was so smooth and calm it was difficult to interpret his expression. He started walking toward the door, but before he unlocked it, he paused and lifted his lips just enough for me to understand that whatever he said, he said sincerely. “Megan,” his eyes shifted shyly to the side, away from my face, “anyone would have done that for you.”

I was still processing the impossibly sweet words when his assistants poured in, demanding to know why they’d been locked out.

“We were talking about family stuff. It’s time,” Braden said, dismissing them. “Blink the house lights.”

I ignored their suspicious stares and imagined everyone backstage frantically moving props into place, finishing costume changes, convincing one another that no one had noticed their mistakes. The wings were filling with actors waiting for another moment in the hot lights. I pictured Phillip’s hand wrapped around Charlotte’s and looked at Braden’s busy fingers, smoothing out his script and adjusting knobs. I envied her.

“Everyone ready?” Braden murmured into his mic. I couldn’t hear Schatz’s reply but he nodded in response and pointed to the boy next to him. “Bring ‘em down.”

Below us the auditorium went dark. “Chase, take the board,” Braden said to the boy positioned at the spotlight and traded him places. Across the dim shadows he met my eyes. He would hold the light for Charlotte just like he held it for me. Yet somehow, I knew it was different.

As soon as the final curtain swung shut, before anyone appeared for final bows I raced downstairs, dodged a few ushers, and made it to the wings in time to see Charlotte meet Phillip center stage and take a bow. I heard the yells of the audience filtered through the glass. Braden turned the houselights up just enough so the actors could see the wave of rising bodies as the audience abandoned their red velvet seats to give a standing ovation. When Charlotte came back, flushed and speechless, I grabbed her in a hug and refused to let go. If I pressed her hard enough against me she couldn’t come up for air to say anything sarcastic.

But she didn’t struggle. She pulled me in with equal force, taking small hops that threw us off balance into Phillip who caught us both.

“You were brilliant,” I shouted.

“I thought you lost your voice.” Taylor’s skeptical glare didn’t faze me.

“I feel so much better,” I announced triumphantly. I released Charlotte at last and pushed her toward Phillip. “Take her to collect all the glory. Don’t let her miss any,” I commanded.

Phillip kissed the top of my head and ushered her through the crowd to the hallway. I fingered the spot where his kiss landed, wondering why it was so easy for him. I sat down on a black, wooden box, warmly accepting the hands on my shoulders of actors and crew who said they had missed me and wished me well. As backstage started to empty and the noise outside grew, I retreated into the deep folds of the curtain, feeling the velvet against my face when Schatz found me.

“Well?” Her mouth was crooked, her eyebrows twisted, her expression as wonderful and complex as she.

“Thank you.” I stood up and embraced her. Not in excitement. Not fast and hard and funny the way she hugged me after a performance. This one was real.