Closing the folder, I carried it to the bureau and placed it in a drawer under a pile of shirts. Then I turned out the lamp by my bed and climbed back in the window seat. I listened to the sounds of the summer night and the mix of music and laughter that floated down from open windows. A moth flicked its wings against my screen. Though I wasn't tired, my eyelids felt as fluttery as a moth. There was a cool breeze and my head grew light, so light it could have floated off my shoulders. Closing my eyes, I leaned against the soft wire screen. My mind slipped into a strange, textureless darkness. Its edges glimmered with pale blue light.
Then my body jerked and I was alert, aware of the sound of my own breathing, quick and hoarse. I felt as if I had been running fast. I held my side, massaging it. I opened my mouth, trying to catch my breath silently, afraid to make the slightest noise.
It was swampy where I was-I could smell the creek and feel the ground ooze beneath my feet. A rooflike structure supported by pilings stretched over the dark area. I listened to the lap of water against the pilings, then footsteps sounded above. Fear flashed through me like light off a knife blade.
I made my way forward into the shallow water-slowly, so as not to make a ripple of sound. I heard the light thump of feet on wet ground, then mud sucking back from shoes. My pursuer was close-whether male or female, I couldn't tell-the night was cloudy and the person's face and body covered. I hid behind one of the pilings.
I heard the person walking slowly, prowling and listening, prowling and listening. I guessed that only ten feet remained between us. If I moved, the person would know immediately where I was. But if I waited any longer, I might get trapped.
I bolted. The pursuer was after me fast as a cat. I tripped and fell facedown, splashing into the muddy ebb of the creek. I scrambled to my feet and rushed forward again.
The tumble had jolted me, and I realized that my knees, though sore from falling, were dry. I had fallen out of the window seat and rushed toward a door, my bedroom door in Drama House. There was no muddy creek here. I was safe.
Still, I shook so badly I knocked into my bedside lamp trying to turn it on. I crept into bed and pulled the sheets up to my chin, shivering despite the July heat. I reached for the lamp a second time. The darkness retreated from the glow of the dim bulb, but I didn't dare look in the corners of the room, lest the shadows turn blue-blue like the lighting in the theater this afternoon, blue like the edges of the nightmare vision I'd just had.
It was only a dream, I told myself, a natural one to have after seeing the place where Liza had died. But the blue light… Please, not again, I thought.
When I was a child I had horrible nightmares, dreams as strange as they were frightening, about people and things I couldn't remember seeing in real life. All of the dreams had a strange blue cast. Waking up from them terrified, I would tell Liza, and she would put her arms around me, holding me tight.
Sometimes she would tell me she had had the same dream. As I grew older I didn't believe her; still it had helped me not to feel alone. 'Sweet dreams,' Liza would always say, soothing me, tucking me back in bed, 'sweet dreams only for you and me.' Eventually the nightmares stopped.
Now I scrunched down under the sheet, sweating and shivering, missing Liza more than ever, and wondering why the dreams had come back.
We gathered in the seats of Stoddard Theater at eight-thirty the next morning. Walker came up the back steps, strode across the stage, then stopped, scanning us slowly, like a shopper carefully eyeing apples before reaching into the pile. Our nervous chatter died.
'Oh, don't be bashful,' he said.
Maggie called roll. Next to Mike, two rows in front of me, sat a guy who answered to Paul McCrae, but all I could see of him was brown hair hanging thick and wavy down the back of his neck. Maggie handed out adhesive name tags, which we were to stick below our left shoulder. Anyone who put it on his or her right was corrected. Brian gave out the books.
'Put your names in them immediately/' Maggie instructed. 'Katie, no more free replacements of lost scripts.'' 'She doesn't forget anything,' the girl named Katie hissed to Shawna.
Walker continued to study us. 'Okay, people,' he said, putting on his half-moon glasses. 'I am assuming you are all intimately familiar with A Midsummer Night's Dream and are fully prepared and eager to impress me with your auditions. Let's begin.'
'Excuse me, Walker.'
His eyes rolled up over his glasses. 'Maggie.'
'I think we should review the plot.'
His smile was a tiny bow. 'You have my permission to think whatever you like. Meanwhile, I'm starting the auditions.'
'And is that because you prefer to review the story halfway through, once it becomes obvious that everyone is confused-as we did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that?'
'I told you she doesn't forget,' Katie whispered.
Walker sighed, then eyed us. 'I believe in learning from my mistakes,' he said, 'but I keep making Maggie assistant director.'
There were muffled laughs. I glanced at Maggie, but she didn't seem to care, perhaps because she knew what he would do next-exactly what she had suggested.
'As you all no doubt already know,' Walker boomed, 'there are four lovers in this play. The two guys, Lysander and Demetrius, are both in love with Hermia. Hermia is in love with Lysander, but Hermia's father has chosen Demetrius to be her husband. Meanwhile, we have poor Helena, Hermia's friend, who is hopelessly in love with Demetrius. Got it?'
We nodded.
'Like all good star-crossed lovers, Hermia and Lysander plan to run away. Helena thinks she can score some points with Demetrius by telling him of Hermia and Lysander's departure. So, what do we have? Hermia and Lysander running off to the forest, Demetrius running after Hermia, and Helena after Demetrius. We have four lovers wandering around the Athenian woods on Midsummer Night.'
Walker strode back and forth across the stage as he spoke, gesturing with the script. He held our attention as if he were Shakespeare himself.
'Enter the fairies: Oberon the fairy king and Titania, the queen. They're married and they're quarreling. Oberon has a jealous, vengeful streak in him. He also has a very mischievous fairy working for him, Puck, and, with Puck's help, he plans to spread a magic flower ointment on his wife's eyes while she is sleeping. The first person, beast, or thing Titania sees when she awakens, she'll fall madly in love with.'
A couple kids giggled, as if just now figuring out what would happen, which told me they hadn't read the play, at least not too well. Maggie knew what she was doing.
'Now, there are some interesting candidates for Titania to fall in love with that night,' Walker continued. 'A group whom we refer to as 'the rustics,' six bumbling guys, are rehearsing a play in the woods to present to the Duke of Athens at his wedding. The Duke's wedding frames the entire play. Puck has some fun and transforms one of the rustics so that he has an ass's head instead of a human one, and it is he whom Titania sees first when she awakens.
'As for the lovers, Oberon gives Puck instructions to use the flower ointment to work out their problem, that is, to make Demetrius fall in love with Helena, so the four are neatly paired up. Unfortunately, Puck gets the guys confused, and we end up with a wonderful reversal, with Demetrius and Lysander now in love with Helena and chasing her, while Hermia is left out in the cold. Got it?'
We all nodded again and Walker hopped down from the stage steps, surprisingly light on his feet.
'Now, Maggie, may we begin?'
'I'm waiting,' she said with a smile.
Walker started by assigning the parts of the lovers, trying different combinations for the two guys and two girls. Watching Mike read, I was amazed at his skill. I had imagined that he had just enough talent, or more accurately, the good looks to earn a small high school part. I was wrong-or perhaps the part of a lover came quite naturally to him. I glanced around: I wasn't the only girl who had trouble taking her eyes off him.
