Now Briana pulls her hand away from Fauve’s grasp. She bats Ashley/Michelle’s fingers off her forehead. “I said I was fine.” She’s staring dead at me.
Fear flutters in my heart. I feel myself rising off the ground, an inch, maybe two. Briana observes this from where she lies mouth-breathing on the chairs and says nothing. Just observes it dully, unfazed. Her teacher levitating off the ground. Everyone else is too focused on Briana to notice me.
“I’m going on,” she repeats to me.
“Miranda,” Fauve says, “you can’t possibly let her go on like this. Who’s her understudy?”
“Dennis,” Ashley/Michelle says. She points at a boy in the corner, dressed like First Lord.
Dennis pales. He shakes his head. “Oh god, Professor. Please don’t make me.”
“Dennis should go on instead,” Fauve says.
“No!” Briana croaks.
Dennis looks at me pleadingly. “Professor, do I have to go on?”
“I’m going on,” Briana insists quietly.
“See she wants to go on,” Dennis says.
“She can’t go on!” Fauve screams at Dennis.
“I’m going on,” Briana says, staring at me. It sounds like a threat.
“Professor Fitch!” Peter’s round face appears in the curtain. “We’re filled to beyond capacity now. I put the chairs in the fire exits and now there are no more chairs and there are still people coming in! What do I do? Can I tell them to go now?”
“No, Peter. Find a way.”
I can feel him still hovering there between the curtains. Silent. A way? I can feel him thinking. How can I find a way if there is no way?
I look back at Briana. So sickly and intent. What do you have in store for me? Are you going to kill my play? Are you going to have your revenge? Show everyone what I did to you? What will that even look like? I picture the various outcomes. Briana in her kingly beard. Breaking the fourth wall in the midst of her soldiership speech. Pointing her trembling finger. Accusing me of sorcery. Or will she just sabotage her performance? Mess up her lines? Faint spectacularly beneath the bright lights? Will she purposely fall off the stage? Smiling as the crowd gasps and leaps to its feet. All those cameras flashing in her eyes and she’ll welcome the blindness.
“How are you going to play the part where the King is magically healed by Helen? You’re supposed to do a dance, remember?”
She could barely do it in the run-throughs this week. Just sat there watching me demonstrate the dance again and again, spinning and jumping with Ellie.
“I’m going on,” Briana says, shaking her head. “I’m going on, I’m going on, and there isn’t a goddamned thing any of you can do about it!” Tears fill her eyes.
The black waves of panic rise. The drum of my heart beating wildly.
“Professor Fitch,” Dennis whispers. “Should I go on?”
“Five minutes to curtain, Miranda,” Fauve says smilingly. I look through the curtain. Peter is turning circles in a sea of chairs. All fire exits filled. Every chair filled with a body. Only those three reserved seats in front row center are still empty. On one side of them sits the dean and his wife. On the other, Briana’s parents staring right at me through a crack in the curtain, holding cups of foyer wine. My stomach flips.
“A good show! We’re here to see a good show,” I hear in the murmuring crowd.
Peter sees me looking through the curtain and mouths my name. Professor Fitch, help!
I close the curtain.
“What the hell is going on out there? I’ve never seen it like that,” Fauve says.
“Well, you know All’s Well That Ends Well. It’s a hit.”
Fauve looks at me strangely, suspiciously. “Where’s Grace? I called and called and couldn’t get an answer. I even drove by her place yesterday and knocked on the door. Nothing.”
“Resting. She’s resting.”
“Resting on opening night?”
“I told her I’d take care of things.”
Fauve stares at me. I stare right back.
“Right after the play I’m going to go and see her again,” she says. “I think we should both go. And if she doesn’t answer, I think we should call the police.”
“Absolutely,” I say. I don’t even fucking hesitate a second.
She keeps staring at me. Waiting for me to break, repent, confess. Confess what? She knows nothing. And yet I see her dreams of my capitulation right there in the hungry brightness of her eyes. Something is fucking afoot, she knows it. Doesn’t know what exactly. Doesn’t care. Because whatever it is is delicious. Whatever it is spells my end. Her beginning and my end.