Page 21 of Meet Me Under the Lights

Thespians were in a league of their own when it came to loyalty. Sure, I did great lighting shows at the high school, but most of those students and my peers weren’t sitting in this auditorium.

“But today,” Ms. Sparrow continued, “I’d like you to think of Eliza as our very own Lighting Goddess Extraordinaire.”

Oh, dear God.

“I’m tweeting that,” Lauryn mumbled.

I smacked her. “Don’t you dare.”

“Too late.” She smiled at her phone. “Ah, already three retweets. You’ll be trending in no time, Goddess.”

“I hate you—”

“Welcome aboard, Rookie,” a smooth voice spoke from behind us.

“Rookie”?

Lauryn kicked my ankle as I turned around and came face-to-face with none other than Raul Ramirez, aka Romeo. Raul starred in every play and musical at Fairfield High. He graduated last year, and his subsequent year at Duke definitely hadn’t hurt him. His dark curly hair still framed his sun-kissed copper skin, and his blue eyes reminded me of a deep ocean.

Truth: I had a mad crush on him two years ago when he played Curly in Oklahoma.

Dreaminess aside though—“Rookie”?

I may have been new to this group, but not to the theater.

“E’s going to blow the lighting design out of the water this summer, Raul. Just you wait,” Lauryn said before mumbling another “Just you wait” under her breath. If there was an opportunity to quote Hamilton, she seized it.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, my cheeks burning.

Raul fell into his seat as Lauryn and I turned back around.

Lauryn leaned close to my ear. “Can you believe I get to kiss him?” She fanned herself with her script. “He’s so pretty, it’s almost not fair.”

I laughed into my shirt.

Lauryn sighed. “He reminds me of that one guy from the newer Star Wars movies…The pilot…”

“Poe?” I asked.

“Yes. A younger Poe. I’d let him take me in the cockpit of his plane—”

“Actually, it’s called an X-wing.” Raul’s face appeared again between both of our heads, making us jump and burst into giggles.

I missed the laughter of that moment a few minutes later, when we were dismissed and told to get to work.

The work, I was ready for.

The hissing and whispering of my last name, I was not.

It apparently didn’t matter that a plaque with Grandma Marguerite’s name decorated the lobby of this theater, surrounded by dozens of other pictures of her charity work for the arts, or that it was her work that saved this theater from bankruptcy more than once.

The name Crowley didn’t hold weight here like it did the other parts of town. Not anymore.

After spending some time backstage with the tech and set design crew, I did a once-over of the tormentor spotlights in the alcoves and moved up to the catwalk, which was, hands down, the scariest place to be in an auditorium. Dropping out of the ceiling, the old grille floor angled downward. What wires weren’t haphazardly tied to the railings were crossed over the walkway like tree roots. One wrong step and I could find myself falling over a can to a certain death below.

Too bad I couldn’t start setting cues until I cleaned up this mess and angled the lights correctly.

I slowly climbed along from stage left toward stage right with my laminated map tucked under my arm, adjusting the lights that had been moved during the last performance here. If I moved too quickly or bumped into one of the daisy chains, I’d knock a can out of place, or worse, knock a bulb loose and have it shatter below.