Echo After Echo by Amy Rose Capetta (13)

Zara finds herself back in the studios for her next rehearsal. The intimacy of the storage room unsettled her, but now she almost misses it.

Kestrel runs to join the chorus members. She laughs the loudest. Hugs everyone the longest.

Zara warms up alone.

Leopold and Meg sit at a folding table with their heads together, whispering. Zara has never known a director with a personal assistant before. What does she do, exactly? She stays close to Leopold, within reaching distance. The looks he gives her are tired, the frayed opposite of the energetic presence she felt the other night.

Zara tries to catch his attention from across the room. All he does is mutter something to Meg.

Brilliant.

That’s what Leopold called Zara.

Brilliant.

The word has a spotlight shine to it. Now that she’s felt its warmth, all she wants is to feel it again.

The stage manager tells them it’s time to begin. Echo doesn’t have much to do in act 1, scene 1 — just wander around the marketplace as the chorus tells Echo’s tragic story. Kestrel is the chorus leader, so she does most of the talking. Her voice has a metallic ring to it, cold and bitter.

The chorus lays out the entire plot before the action even starts — that’s how Greek tragedy works. It’s never bothered Zara before, but all of a sudden it feels bizarre. The audience knows at the beginning that Echo and Ariston are going to fall in love. They know how bad things are going to get. People sit there riveted and watch things unfold, inch by beautiful inch. Until the beauty shades into pain.

Is that part of what people want? Zara has only ever cared about the love in Echo and Ariston’s story. But the pain has been there waiting. Inevitable. It’s right in the prologue, mocking her.

Leopold watches with bored eyes, shouts out blocking. Zara scribbles down her entrance, her crosses. The second time they run the scene, she sets down her script. Now she can really start acting.

Leopold leaps up from his chair and walks with her.

He puts a hand on her back. “Stand up straight.” He pushes her upright. “An arch in the foot, please.” His fingers brush up and down her neck. “More length here. And stop breathing like Zara Evans. You are not Zara Evans.” He puts a hand to her stomach, which makes her feel soft and exposed, but she doesn’t stop walking. She waits with empty lungs, until Leopold tells her that she can take another breath. “Slowly. Control it. Echo is not like you. Never forget that. Echo is better. Pull in your fat, please. No one is coming to the Aurelia to see a modern slob. Don’t look at Meg; she can’t help you. Listen to me.” He leans closer to her ear. His voice is a single drop of cold water. “Listen.”

This goes on for an hour. Zara is wrong and wrong and wrong. But that’s how she’s going to get better, right? By knowing just how bad she is? Other directors she’s worked with have given her some idea of what she’s good at, but she’s never known if she could trust the praise. Was her performance really good, or just good enough for a school play or summer stage?

This must be what making art feels like. This must be what it means to become a true artist. Zara must learn to second-guess, not just everything she’s doing but everything she is.

Leopold holds her waist as she walks forward. “Yes,” he says. “Yes.” They’re trembling on the verge of something good. The spotlight comes back, and the rest of the world is lost in the dark.

And then the scene ends and Leopold lets her go with a sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose as if he is trying to keep his disappointment contained. “We have so much work to do.”

So Zara works.

All week, she pushes herself. Day after day, Leopold is in her ear, whispering. The other actors keep their distance. There is no time to make friends, anyway. There is barely time to become Echo. On Friday, the actors’ day off, her fear drives her to the studio so she can get in more time with her script, make up for years of training that she doesn’t have.

She weaves her fingers into a knot and pushes her hands up, up, into the spot below her ribs where her voice lives. It leaps out, carrying farther each time she tries, but the sound is still breathy, weak. She stretches herself until her muscles make it clear that one more inch would be the snapping point.

And then she stretches a little bit farther.

This is what Zara wanted. To be bigger than herself. To do more than she ever could in her tiny life at home.

She says the first monologue until her voice turns into raw ribbons.

When she closes her eyes, she sees Roscoe on the ground, bleeding, but the blood is red curtain fabric.

Zara opens her eyes. She sees herself in the long mirror but she doesn’t want to be that girl, the one who isn’t good enough. She thinks of all the actresses in the greenroom, the ones who weren’t cast. The ones with real résumés and the bodies that people want to stare at, to worship.

Zara hits her script again. Harder.

She runs the lines. Louder.

The edges of what she can do are invisible, but they’re always there, and she slams into them so many times. She needs to be better. She needs to be more. Zara works until the sky — cut up into squares by the tall windows — goes watery red. It’s only the middle of the afternoon, but a winter night is closing in.

Maybe she’ll stay here until dawn. Maybe she’ll live at the theater.

Zara is stuck on act 1. She can’t get past the part where Echo runs away from home.

Zara hears footsteps coming down the hall. For a single moment she is sure that Leopold is coming to berate her — or worse, tell her that she should give up now and leave the theater.

Zara doesn’t notice a new fear taking root in the dark soil of Roscoe’s death until it’s planted firmly in her mind. Roscoe failed at his lighting design. Zara is failing at Echo. What if someone wants to stop her? Really stop her?

Zara walks on her bare feet and tucks herself into the corner of the studio. Tense, each muscle in perfect suspension.

And then Eli peeks in. Everything about her looks tired, except for her eyes, which are fever bright.

They haven’t talked since their trip to the balcony.

“I was over in the offices with the stage manager and I thought I heard your voice,” Eli explains. “You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Zara crosses her arms over her chest.

Eli takes a long look at Zara in her tight-fitting rehearsal clothes, which only makes it worse. There’s a sort of calculation in that look, like Zara is a tricky math problem. “How long have you been in here?”

Zara’s brain feels broken. “Four . . . five? Hours?”

Eli twitches her head toward the door.

“I can’t leave. I told Leopold . . .” No outside commitments. No distractions. “I have to keep working.”

Eli nods as if she gets it. “This will be Echo-related, I promise.” Eli points at the puddle of dark fabric in the corner of the studio. “Come on. We’re leaving. Put your coat on.”

Zara takes the first step. Despite Eli’s promise, Zara feels that following her is against the rules. Exactly what Leopold told Zara to avoid. But she takes another step, and soon she’s rushing down the hall, calling out, “Where are we going?”