Chapter Five

MONDAY afternoon, Blake locked his office and pulled out his change of clothes. Jenny would have already started the organizational meeting, but Blake had after-school duties he couldn’t shirk just because he wanted to be there when the theater meeting started. He pulled off his tie and changed from his dress slacks into a pair of jeans. He didn’t expect them to get dirty today, but he had a sweatshirt he could pull over his dress shirt if they started right away.

He slipped into the back of the theater and took a seat behind the last student. Danny, the lead from the fall production, turned around at the creak of the wooden seat folding down, but Blake waved his attention back to the front of the theater. He might be the going favorite for the lead again, but he still had to know when to show up for auditions or he wouldn’t get a spot.

As Jenny continued down her list of dates, times, and expectations, Blake looked around the rest of the auditorium, mentally cataloguing who was there and who wasn’t. Emma and Zach, the stage managers from the fall, were both there, but he didn’t see Kayla, the female lead. Not every student participated in every performance, of course, but he’d expected her to be back. He’d have to ask Jenny about her later. After a few moments, he found Kit and Phillip sitting in the very front, listening closely to everything Jenny had to say. Good. They weren’t acting like they were there under duress. His gaze landed on a few more students he recognized and quite a few he didn’t. That was always exciting. Emma and Zach would both graduate in the spring, so they’d be watching for students to take over the role next fall. He had a few in mind, but the new faces could change things.

“Okay, that’s all the general information I have,” Jenny said. “If you’re planning to audition, meet me stage left to pick up audition lines. If you’re here for stage crew, Emma and Zach are your stage managers. They’ll meet you stage right, along with Mr. Barnes, to discuss work schedules, experience, and expectations.”

Blake rose and moved stage right along with a good twenty kids, only about half of whom he knew. They’d have to see how many stuck around for the long haul, but he’d take any and all comers. When they’d all gathered in the wings, he nodded to Emma and Zach. He might’ve been the official sponsor for the stage crew, but he believed in student-run productions as much as Jenny did. He was just there to make sure everything stayed on track and all safety protocols were observed.

“Hi, I’m Zach.”

“And I’m Emma. We’re the stage managers for Guys and Dolls. It’s a big show. A really big show. With lots of moving parts, so we’ll be working more afternoons than we did in the fall for The Odd Couple. We’ll also need a lot more people during the performances for set changes.”

“We’re glad you’re all here, and we hope you’re ready to work because this won’t be a picnic. Fun, but not easy. Does everyone know Mr. Barnes?”

Blake waved. He didn’t know all the students, but they all seemed to know him.

“He’s our sponsor. He’s been doing theater since he was in high school, so he really knows his stuff. Anything you need to know about the tools, the plans, anything like that, ask him. Nobody expects you to know anything about it now. We just expect you not to be stupid about it if you don’t know what you’re doing. Got it?”

The returning students all grinned. The new ones nodded obediently.

“Good,” Zach went on. “Normally we’d call it quits after we gave out schedules since it’s the first day, but we don’t have any time to waste. If you can’t stay today, that’s fine. Be back here tomorrow at three thirty, ready to work. We work until six, five days a week, while they’re doing auditions and learning lines and music. When they get ready to start blocking, we’ll have to share stage time, so we’ll need to be as far along as we can be because they need as much of the set as possible so they can learn the choreography.”

“If you can stay today, we’re working until six,” Emma added. “We have six moveable sets to build, so we need to get started.”

Because he hadn’t intended to work the spring production, Blake hadn’t read the script or discussed the set with Jenny, but now he was glad he’d decided to help after all. Usually they had one fixed set, two at the most. Six was crazy.

Some of the kids left then, but most of them waited for instruction.

“Can I see the plans?” Blake asked Emma.

She handed them over before she and Zach started organizing people to go into the loft and lower down supplies. He let them handle that part. They knew what they were doing. He needed to get his head around six sets.

Six moveable sets.

The mission—inside and outside—the street, the sewers, Havana, and the nightclub. As he examined the plans, he had to admit either Jenny or the kids—or both—had done a great job envisioning how to handle them. The mission would be on a double platform on wheels so it could roll on- or offstage as needed and spin to show the outside or the inside according to the scene. The street scene would likewise be a series of rolling platforms with the buildings painted on one side of the walls and pipes painted on the other side for the sewers. The Hot Box—the nightclub where Adelaide danced—would be one side of a third set of platforms with the restaurant in Havana as the other side. It was still a heck of a lot of work, but not as much as he’d feared.

He set aside the plans and went to help move platforms and flats. With all this to put together, they’d need every one in the loft and probably still have to build some new ones.

THANE walked into the house in Idle Hour—his pride and joy after all the remodeling he’d done after buying it as a barely standing foreclosed fixer-upper—and took a minute to savor the quiet. It wouldn’t last long. Phillip had texted to say they were on their way home from their first day of working with the theater program, but for the moment, he had the house all to himself. He’d argued with himself when he bought the house, but after growing up on the poor side of town, he’d promised himself he’d live in a better neighborhood. He wasn’t the family type, so the better school district didn’t matter at the time, but it was the right address. Now he was glad he’d given in to the impulse, because Kit and Phillip deserved the chance to go to a good school.

He padded silently upstairs on sock feet and stripped off his work clothes. He needed to do laundry, but that would have to wait for later. First he had to figure out dinner. Nobody really cared if he wore a dirty shirt to a work site, but Kit and Phillip would care if they didn’t have dinner. He took a minute to wash his hands and let the hot water sting his cold fingers. They probably should have waited another couple of weeks to start this project, since the weather in early February wasn’t exactly warm, but the homeowner was impatient and willing to pay handsomely for them to start now and finish on or before deadline. He’d offered to split the bonus with anyone willing to work outside regardless of the weather, and his crew had come through as always. He was lucky to have such dedicated people. A lot of construction teams didn’t.

When the hot water felt good instead of hurting, Thane turned off the tap and headed back downstairs. He could make spaghetti tonight. Even he could brown some ground beef and boil a pot of spaghetti. He wasn’t about to attempt a homemade spaghetti sauce like Derek’s mother made, but the kind in a jar wasn’t bad.

He’d gotten the water on to boil and had the beef sizzling nicely when the front door banged open and Kit and Phillip tromped in. He hadn’t considered the proximity to Henry Clay when he bought the house, but living close enough that the boys could walk had made the adjustment less painful on all of them.

“In the kitchen,” Thane called. They came in a few minutes later, faces wet like they’d scrubbed them and the biggest grins he’d seen on their faces since before Lily got sick. “Good day?”

“The best,” Kit said. “I know stage crew is supposed to be community service, but it was so cool, Uncle Thane. They have this huge loft full of pieces, and they put them together like Tetris to make walls and doors and anything you need. We’ll have to build some new ones because we need so many for this year’s musical, which will be cool. Did you know the school has a shop with all kinds of power tools? Mr. Barnes said he’d teach us how to use them all if we needed them, although he didn’t think we’d need the jigsaw this year. But he said if there was time, he’d teach us that too. And we weren’t the only new kids to the crew, so it wasn’t like we were singled out. The stage managers were really nice. They’re seniors. They’ve been doing this since they were freshmen, but since they’re going to graduate this year, they’ll need new stage managers for next year. It’ll probably be Amber and Morgan, since they’re juniors and this is already their third year, but the year after that, it could maybe be me.”

Thane burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. “Kit, breathe. I promise I will listen to everything you have to say. You don’t have to get it all out at once.”

“Sorry, but it was really cool. I got a little excited.”

“I’m glad you’re excited about it, and I want to hear all the details, but you were talking so fast I couldn’t catch everything you were saying. You and Phillip get the table set and the dishwasher emptied and tell me about it slowly, okay?”

“Okay.” Thane nearly dropped the spatula in his hand when Kit threw his arms around Thane’s waist and hugged him tightly. “Thank you.”

Thane stroked his hand over Kit’s dark hair. He didn’t have a clue why Kit was thanking him, but he was happy, and that was all that mattered. “You’re welcome.”

When Kit let go, Thane looked over at Phillip. “Did you have a good time too?”

“Yeah, it was cool, like Kit said. There’s about twenty of us working on the stage crew, and everybody seemed nice. Emma and Zach are the stage managers, and they really seem to know what they’re doing. Mr. Barnes is officially the sponsor, but Emma and Zach were the ones giving all the directions. Mr. Barnes only stepped in if more people had questions at once than Emma and Zach could answer. I mean, he helped the whole time, but he just worked right next to everyone else, like he was another kid, not like he was in charge.”

He probably doesn’t have the balls to be in charge, Thane thought. He should probably volunteer a few times to make sure Barnes actually knew what he was doing where the power tools were concerned. Someone could get hurt if he didn’t.

“Table’s set,” Kit announced. “Did you know Mr. Barnes has been working on theater sets since he was our age? He started when he was in high school. His first production was The Foreigner. He said he’s been trying to convince Ms. Clark to do that one for a few years, but she always picks other things instead.”

Thane frowned. They’d put on The Foreigner at Tates Creek when he was a senior. He hadn’t been involved, hadn’t even gone to see the performance, but he remembered the controversy over whether it would be allowed to go on after one of the principals walked in on a dress rehearsal and saw people dressed in Ku Klux Klan uniforms. He didn’t know how they’d finally convinced her to let the play continue, but the show hadn’t been canceled.

That had to be a coincidence. Lots of high schools probably put on that particular play.

“Dinner will be ready as soon as the sauce is hot,” Thane said as he added the sauce to the ground beef. “You can tell me more over dinner.”

The boys got drinks out—Cokes for them and a beer for Thane—and waited patiently while he stirred the sauce and dished out dinner. Lily had taught them manners, that was for sure. Thane had never been this patient when he was their age.

“All right, tell me the rest,” Thane said when he’d set the plates in front of them and taken his own seat.

Kit spent all of dinner gushing about the afternoon. Phillip nodded along, occasionally adding a tidbit of his own but mostly letting Kit talk. Thane made appropriate encouraging noises whenever Kit looked his way, but Kit didn’t seem to need the encouragement. He glowed with excitement as he talked about the plans for the set and all the different moving parts and how they’d never attempted something this complex before.

Thane still didn’t know if this would solve Phillip’s and Kit’s problem with the bullies, but seeing the joy on Kit’s face, he resolved to do everything he could to encourage them. Anything that made Kit this happy was a good thing.