The Show Must Go On! (8 page)

“Very funny,” Tiffany replied, pulling off the mask and scowling. “Maybe you should be in a comedy instead of a scary play.”

“The ghost is an important character,” Bree said.

“Don't placate me,
Gabrielle
,” Tiffany shot back. “I know exactly what my role is in this production. I don't need your pity, and I don't need your pitiful attempts to try to make me feel better.”

Bree turned away. She had tried being friendly to Tiffany at every rehearsal, even though it seemed at times as if Tiffany was trying to scare her into leaving the show. But enough was enough. She didn't like Tiffany. She didn't have to be her friend. She didn't have to make her feel better. She just had to work with her in the play.

Ms. Hollows gave the cast their notes. She was very pleased with how the play was taking shape, but there were always things that needed to be tightened up and fine-tuned so that the play would go off without a hitch when it was performed in front of an audience.

Following notes, Ms. Hollows dismissed the cast.

“I think Tiffany makes a great ghost, don't you?” Melissa asked Bree as the two left the school building.

“Why does she have to be so snotty all the time, Lis?”

“Hey, it just wouldn't be Tiffany without the attitude,
now would it? Forget about her. With any luck, that mask will get stuck to her face and we won't have to listen to her whine anymore. See ya tomorrow, Bree. Gotta run.”

“See ya.”

Arriving at home, Bree found a note from her parents:

Out getting groceries with Megan. We'll be back in time for dinner. Snacks in the fridge.

Love, M & D

She threw open the refrigerator door and pulled out a plate filled with cut-up pieces of fruit and a few cookies, then headed for the stairs leading up to her bedroom.

Suddenly all the lights in the house began to flicker on and off.

What's going on?
she wondered, pausing at the bottom of the staircase.

Again the lights flickered on and off. Then they went off and stayed off.

Placing the plate of snacks on a small table in the hallway, Bree opened a drawer on the front of the table and pulled out a flashlight. Her family kept flashlights handy in case of power outages. But this was different.

She noticed that although every light in the house seemed to be out, they hadn't actually lost power. Digital clocks on the front of the coffeemaker in the kitchen and the DVR in the living room still glowed with the correct time. Only the lights seemed to be affected. Bree wondered if she somehow blew a fuse.

She flipped the hallway light switch on and off several times, but the lights stayed dark. Switching the flashlight on, she headed upstairs, thinking that maybe the lights up there would work. Reaching her room, she stepped in and tried the overhead light.

Nothing.

Then her bedside lamp.

Nothing.

Yet the numbers on her alarm clock still shone brightly.

Walking around her bedroom in the dark, carrying a flashlight, gave Bree a very creeped-out feeling. It was as if she were still walking around the stage in
the dark, searching Carrie's bedroom with only a flashlight.

This is way too close to the play,
she thought.

Bree swept the flashlight's beam across her wall. As the light passed the window, she spotted a face staring at her from outside. It had dark, sunken eyes.

Moving exactly as she had just an hour earlier at rehearsal, Bree raced across the room, yanked the window open, and stuck her head out. But just as in the play, the face had vanished. Bree swept her flashlight down to the street. She leaned out the window and shone the beam left, right, down, even up, searching for that haunting face. But it was officially gone.

All right. This is going too far,
Bree thought.
Maybe I'm really Carrie, and this whole Bree thing is a part in a play.

“Bree! We're home!” her dad called from downstairs.

“Pull yourself together,” she murmured to herself as she raced from her room and bounded down the stairs, following the beam of her flashlight. As she ran, a thought popped into her head. Maybe she wasn't crazy after all.

“Megan!” Bree shouted, storming right up to her sister, putting her face nose-to-nose with Megan's. “Were you just outside my window? Are you trying to scare me out of doing the play?”

“Outside your window?” Megan asked incredulously. “How would I get up there?”

“What are you talking about?” her mother said sternly. “Your sister has been with us for the past two hours. She came into the house with us just now. And speaking of the house, why are you here in the dark?”

“All the lights just went out at the same time,” Bree explained. “I tried—”

Flick!

Bree was interrupted by the sound of her mother flipping on the light switch—the same switch that Bree had flipped up and down a bunch of time just a few minutes earlier. The lights came right on.

“The lights work just fine,” her mother said. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I don't know about you, Mom, but it's clear to me that the pressure of doing this play is proving to be too much for poor Bree,” Megan said, her voice positively dripping with condescension.

Their mother gave Megan a reproachful look, but she didn't say anything. Maybe she was starting to think Bree was cracking under the pressure too. And if she was being perfectly honest with herself, Bree was beginning to agree with her. She must have imagined the face in the window.

Normally she would have protested both the tone and content of Megan's comment. She would have whined to her mother about how Megan had been against her from the start, how her sister should be more supportive, and on and on.

But Megan was right. The pressure of the play, the weird connections between what happened in the story and what was happening in her life, were blurring the lines between where Carrie ended and where Bree began.

And thinking that, Bree finally came to a decision. Despite the fact that they were far into the rehearsal process, she would quit the play. Tomorrow.

Much to her surprise, she slept better that night than she had for a while. No bad dreams. No dreams of any kind that she could remember. The incident with the face in her window began to fade from her thoughts. Perhaps having made the decision to leave the play had calmed her mind, freed her from the craziness that had invaded her life ever
since the moment she'd agreed to do the show. Whatever it was, she awoke the next morning rested and refreshed.

“Any more scary faces at your window?” Megan asked, munching a piece of toast.

“The only scary face I see is the one across from me now,” Bree replied, feeling much more like sparring with her sister than she had the night before.

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Megan replied. “But I still think you should quit that show before you completely lose all your marbles.”

Bree just shrugged casually. Although she had made her decision, something in her mind told her not to say anything to Megan until the deed was actually done.

“Gotta run,” was all she said, tossing her napkin onto her plate and pushing her chair away from the table. “You'll be a dear and put these in the sink for me, won't you?”

Before Megan could reply, Bree jumped up from the table and ran toward the door.

“Mom!” Megan whined at the top of her voice.

“She left already,” Bree called back to the kitchen. “Bye!” Then she scooted out the door.

At the start of her classes, Bree felt confident about her decision. She imagined what she would say to
Ms. Hollows that afternoon. But as the day wore on, she grew more and more anxious about going into rehearsal and actually saying the words “I quit” aloud. By the time classes ended and Bree was walking to the auditorium, she was practically in a state of panic. She opened the door to the auditorium, stepped inside, and knew instantly that she wasn't going to quit the show.

There was something different about being in that theater. As if the place, or more accurately, the play, had a life of its own. And Bree felt as if it had some influence over her life. She decided not to fight it and to simply hope things would get better. That the weird stuff would stop and that she could find a clearer line between Bree and Carrie. But at this point, could that actually happen?

“Let's pick up the scene, girls, just before Carrie gets the phone call, shall we?” Ms. Hollows announced as the girls all took the stage.

RACHEL: So do you really think that was someone at your window?

CARRIE: I don't know what to think.

LAURA: Let's just try to forget about everything and go back to that Witch's Body game.

CARRIE: Good idea. My turn.

(SOUND EFFECT: BRIIIING! BRIIIING! BRIIIING! EVERYONE JUMPS AS THE PHONE IN CARRIE'S BEDROOM RINGS LOUDLY.)

CARRIE: Who in the world could be calling me? It's so late.

(CARRIE PICKS UP THE PHONE. A VOICE STARTS SPEAKING.)

FEMALE VOICE ON PHONE: Leave now, and never come back . . . or you'll be sorry!

(CARRIE PRESSES THE SPEAKERPHONE BUTTON JUST AS THE MESSAGE REPEATS.)

FEMALE VOICE OVER SPEAKERPHONE: Leave now, and never come back . . . or you'll be sorry!

(SOUND EFFECT: CLICK!)

RACHEL: That was one crazy crank call.

CARRIE: Something tells me it wasn't a crank call. I'm going to use call return.

(CARRIE DIALS THE CALL RETURN NUMBER.)

OPERATOR'S VOICE FROM PHONE: The number you have dialed is not in service. No more information is available.

They ran the scene three times until Ms. Hollows was happy with it. Bree felt herself dragging a bit. After rehearsal, she and Melissa stood outside the school.

“Rehearsal was kinda slow today, don't you think, Lis?” Bree asked.

“Seemed okay to me,” Melissa said, shrugging. “But I guess Ms. Hollows agreed with you, since she made us do the scene three times.”

BRIIIING! BRIIIING! BRIIIING!

Bree's cell phone rang. She jumped a bit, realizing that it was ringing with the same old-fashioned ringtone that the sound effects engineer had chosen to use for Carrie's phone in the play.

Glancing down at her screen, she saw the caller ID:
UNKNOWN NUMBER
.

Bree pressed speakerphone.

A female with a hollow, distant voice said, “Leave now, and never come back . . . or you'll be sorry!”

“It's gotta be a prank, Bree,” Melissa said when Bree had hung up the call. “Someone who was at rehearsal and saw the scene we just did.”

“And who do you think that might be?” Bree said, not even trying to disguise the anger in her voice. “The voice was kind of familiar. I just can't exactly put my finger on it, but guess who is number one on my list?”

“Tiffany,” Melissa answered. “You know, Bree, I thought you were being a little paranoid, suspecting that Tiffany was actively trying to get you to leave the play. But now, this seems like a no-brainer. She's still inside, you know.”