Zara stands in the lighting booth, alone.
It’s early. Too early. But Zara’s sleep was shredded into long, ragged strips — awake and restless or asleep and midnightmare. The sad part is that she would have loved the nightmares if even one of them had Eli in it.
Today is Christmas. The Aurelia is dark. This is one day when the city feels like it’s gone dark, too.
What is Eli doing? Did she go back to Connecticut to spend the day with her family? Did she stay in the city and start looking for a new job? Did she go out and try to meet another girl as quickly as possible? One who was prettier than Zara? Easier to love? One she wouldn’t have to stay in the dark for?
The lighting booth is nothing without the assistant designer. No stacks of loose paper with her deeply slanted handwriting. Zara inhales, hoping to catch Eli’s smell — spicy pencil shavings and electrical sparks and mint lotion.
Nothing.
That’s not why Zara’s here. She needs evidence of what Leopold did. If she can find evidence, then she can stop Leopold from hurting anyone else. If she can stop Leopold, then she stayed for a reason and not just because he told her to.
The booth is supposed to tell her more about Roscoe, to give up some clue that she and Eli missed the first time around.
Zara falls to her knees, bones meeting the floor abruptly. Trying to prove Leopold’s guilt was supposed to distract her, but it’s not enough.
She plays a new game.
You’re allowed to crumple on your side, but not cry.
You’re allowed to sob like someone reached down your throat and is trying to tear out your lungs, but you’re not allowed to cry.
The tears leave with hot fury, like they’re angry at Zara for not letting them out sooner. How could Eli ask her to leave? How could Zara say no?
You’re allowed to stay here for a while and think about her. As long as you don’t cry.
Zara wipes away the blurry salt. She sees something on the floor. It’s shiny and metal and familiar. Zara clutches it in her left hand, forgetting the bruise until it’s too late. She’s holding Eli’s Leatherman, with its mismatched teeth and sharp fingers that fold out from the handle.
Eli left without her things. The stage manager had the lighting booth emptied, stripped of Eli. The crew must have missed this. Zara should return it. But as she turns it over and over, she knows that she has no intention of giving up the one piece of Eli that she still has.
That’s not right. She touches the keys that hang around her neck.
She has two things now.
A sound startles Zara into dropping the Leatherman. It takes a few rings to realize that it’s her phone, trying to leap out of her pocket. Zara has thought about calling Eli so many times. But what would she say?
Zara takes out her phone.
The little screen is lit up with a single word. Home.
She hasn’t talked to her parents in over a week. She can’t imagine doing it now. Her finger finds the button that will send them to voice mail — but they shouldn’t be calling her so late. They never do. Zara’s heart twists, finds a new way to be terrified.
“Mom?” she asks. “Dad?”
“Hi, honey.” Her mom’s voice is half sigh.
“What’s wrong?” Zara asks. She finds herself back on her feet. Moving. “Is something —”
“Everything’s fine. Except that we can’t get in touch with you.” Zara wants to apologize, but she can’t find a single I’m sorry to wring out of her body. “I know your rehearsals run late, but . . .”
“Yeah. I’ve been hard to get a hold of. I know.” The distance in Zara’s voice makes her wince. The air in the lighting booth is a mess of unsaid things. Leopold and his visions. Love and death.
Eli. Eli. Eli.
“We’re coming to see you in a few days and we need to make sure we’re all set,” her mom says.
“No.” Zara can’t have them here, not until Leopold is gone. Besides, there’s still one more problem to deal with. The curse ends on opening night. “You should come later in the run,” Zara insists. “The show isn’t ready yet.”
She tells them about her wrist — one little dark truth she can admit without dragging the rest of it into the light. Besides, it backs up her story about the play needing more time to get on its feet. She definitely doesn’t tell them how it happened. My girlfriend hit the blackout too early, probably because she thought I was in danger.
She rewrites that in her head.
Ex-girlfriend.
“Zara, honey, should we be worried?” her mom asks. The tone of her voice sends Zara back to a time when she was a little girl watching her mom’s hands reach into the darkness of their medicine cabinet, searching for cotton balls, cough medicine, Band-Aids. Whatever would make it better.
“Honey,” her mom says. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” Zara says. “Still here.” Her view of the stage becomes a watercolor. She blinks, trying to give the world solid edges.
“Here’s your dad,” her mom says, handing off the phone.
You can tell them you love them, but only if you don’t cry.
“Merry Christmas,” her dad says, which is sort of a family joke.
“Merry Christmas,” she says back, her voice halfway gone.
“Are you excited about opening night?” he asks, probably just to be saying something.
“I’m scared,” Zara says.
At least she doesn’t have to lie.