The Veil (17 page)

“I think we’ve got this, Nate,” Luc said pleasantly, doing his best to get me out of it. “Addy has things she needs to be doing backstage, I think.”

“No, she doesn’t,” I told him evenly. “Addy will be perfectly fine lending a hand here.” And to prove it, I reached out and grabbed the nearest ladder; took one deep, shuddering breath; and began to climb.

I did not allow myself to look down—I looked straight through the rungs at the back wall of the auditorium as I made my way steadily upward. I had to keep going until I was at the second
highest rung of the ladder in order to be even with the lighting frame; when I reached it, I paused. I wasn’t quite sure what to do now, other than to stay put and await instructions.

The others were below me—far, far below me—discussing how to proceed.

“I’ll go up the other side,” Terrance said to Luc and Nate, bounding effortlessly up the ladder until he was even with me. “You guys can pass the lights up to us. Does Addy know how to use a screwdriver?”

“
Yes
,” I said testily, without looking down. Why were they all insisting on talking about me as though I wasn’t there? It was such a guys-around-tools thing to do.

“Addy,” Luc’s voice floated up to me, “are you sure you—”

“I’m fine,” I said through clenched teeth. “Start handing the lights up to me.”

This plan, unfortunately, required me to look down. I grasped the top of the ladder with both hands before I tried it, which was a good thing because as soon as I got my first glimpse of how far away the auditorium floor actually was, I got dizzy.

I tightened my grip on the ladder and tried to literally
force
my head to stop spinning. I was staying up here until the job was done, no matter what—I had to prove to him I could. I wasn’t quite sure whether the “him” I was talking about was Nate (who had, after all, practically dared me to do this in the first place) or Luc. Maybe both.

It didn’t matter. Climbing back down the ladder in shame was not an option.

My vision finally became steady enough, and I finally got brave enough to let go of the ladder with one hand, reach down, and take up the screwdriver and the first of the heavy lights Luc handed up to me. He had to climb halfway up the ladder in order to put them both in my hands, and I shuddered as even his careful climbing shook the rungs beneath my feet.

“This is silly,” he observed, as I straightened back up.

I looked over at Terrance, who was already beginning to attach the first of the lights Nate handed up to him. Nate watched me from the bottom of Terrance’s ladder, a look of mild concern on his face.

Screw him. He didn’t get to dare me to do something scary and then act concerned. I held the light in place and started screwing it in.

Terrance was a lot faster than I was; he finished all four lights on his side of the frame before I was done with my first two.

It’s not a race
, I told myself bending down to accept light number three from Luc.
You can win this one just by finishing.

“Tech crew!” Mrs. Grimsby’s shrill voice came from backstage. “I need a hand with the living room set!”

Terrance and Nate, both standing just below my ladder, looked at each other and ran to answer the summons. Nate threw another worried glance at me as he disappeared behind the curtain.

“Okay,” Luc said. “They’re gone. Now will you please come down and let me do the last one?”

“No,” I said stubbornly, finishing light number three and holding my hand out for the fourth.

“What are you trying to prove, exactly?” His voice was thick with disapproval as he climbed part way up the ladder to hand me the last light.

“That I’m not afraid of heights,” I answered, straightening back up and picking up the screwdriver.

“No. Nate knew what he was doing, asking you to help. He was trying to make you go up the ladder so you’d be scared and nervous, and he succeeded. Who’s winning here, Addy?”

“I’m almost done,” I said irritably. “Besides, you don’t have the greatest track record with lightbulbs.”

“My problems don’t start until the electricity is turned on,” he reminded me.

I ignored him, straining to put the light in its proper place. The third light placement had been a bit of a stretch for me, and I could barely reach the fourth one. Terrance must have longer arms than I do.

The reasonable thing would have been for me to climb down the ladder, move it two feet to the left, and climb back up to deal with the light. But I wasn’t about to do that—I knew if I got off of the ladder for even a second, Luc would never let me back up.

So I did the unreasonable thing and stretched as far as I could until only the toes of my right foot were touching the ladder, and I was depending entirely on the hastily put-together metal frame above my head to hold my weight.

Predictably, it wasn’t up to the task. The fourth light placement snapped off of the frame and fell heavily to the auditorium floor.

I was falling with it—until all of a sudden, I wasn’t.

My panic at seeing the auditorium floor rushing up at me caused me to close my eyes. When the bone-crushing smack I expected never happened, I opened my eyes cautiously and looked around.

I was floating in midair, at least six feet off of the floor, stretched out horizontally on my stomach as though there were imaginary wires hanging from the ceiling, suspending my shoulders and my feet.

Luc was directly below me, arms outstretched, prepared to catch me. He gazed up at me, openmouthed.

There was a shout from behind the still-closed curtain; Luc looked in the direction of the noise, then back up at me. “Get down,” he said urgently.

I just stared at him. “You’re not doing this?” I asked incredulously.

He shook his head. “No. Hurry.”

I’m not sure how I lowered myself to the ground—I just sort of thought about it, and it happened. My feet had just touched down and my top half had just flopped over in an uncoordinated heap into Luc’s arms when Nate, Terrance, and Mrs. Grimsby came running around the side of the curtain.

“What happened?” Nate asked as I untangled myself from Luc. No mere human could have possibly smelled that wonderful. And having his arms around me—even for such a brief moment—shouldn’t have felt so good.

“The light slipped out of my hand as I was handing it up,” Luc lied, setting me back on my feet and picking up the smashed light. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Grimsby, but I think it’s broken.”

Mrs. Grimsby heaved an enormous sigh, then waved a hand in front of her face. “No matter. We’ll get by with seven lights, but move the frame so the lighting on stage looks even. This is only the first disaster of the evening—I expect much more than this to go wrong at a dress rehearsal.” She turned and marched dramatically back behind the curtain.

Terrance shook his head as he watched her go, then looked admiringly at Luc. “She would have
killed
me if I’d been the one to drop the light,” he said thoughtfully. “She must like you, dude.”

“Addy, are you okay?” Nate asked. He looked so sincerely unhappy right then, so obviously sorry for what he had done, I wanted to hug him.

Or tell him that apparently, I could fly. Or at least float.

Instead, I just said, “Yeah,” and helped the three guys shove the lighting structure a few feet to the left.

——

I didn’t have a chance to speak to Luc about what happened until rehearsal was well underway and we were midway through Act 2. Nate and Terrance sat in the back of the auditorium, arguing over how to label the lighting board, and Olivia was onstage delivering the monologue Luc had helped her with at lunch several weeks ago.

“Did you
see
?” I exclaimed when we were alone on stage right, standing beside the prop table I’d painstakingly set up during Act 1.

“I did,” he said, grinning. “Flying. Now that’s a cool ability.”

I gave him a hard look. “Are you
sure
you didn’t do anything?”

“I swear I didn’t,” he said solemnly. “I was ready to catch you before you hit the floor, but that’s it. It was all you.”

“Flying,” I breathed, then stared at him. “Is that why you sort of laughed at me at the Headlands when you found out I was afraid of heights?”

He looked embarrassed. “I only laughed a little. You have to admit, it’s ironic.”

“But how did you know? Can a lot of the Annorasi fly?”

Luc shushed me, immediately looking around to double check that we were alone. “Yes,” he whispered in reply. I felt my face fall a little bit, and he hastily added, “but not every Annorasi can. And, given you’re only half Annorasi, I think it’s very impressive that flying is one of your abilities.”

“Addy,” Olivia’s head popped in on us from the other side of the curtain. “Do you have the vase?”

I snatched up the glass vase she wanted and ran over to hand it to her.

——

Later in the evening, when we were almost at the end of Act 3, Mrs. Grimsby decided to expand my role as prop master to include special effects.

Olivia’s big death scene required her character, Victoria Goodrich, to be shot by Lila Goodrich, Mrs. Goodrich’s long-lost grandchild. Lila Goodrich was being played by a sophomore named Casey Hamilton; I knew Olivia and Mrs. Grimsby had cast Casey in the role because tiny, birdlike Casey with her short, Peter–Pan style blonde hair looked the least like a murderer of anyone in the entire cast. Casey would actually “shoot” Olivia, but I would make the sound effects.

My new job required me to kneel behind the back wall of the living room set with Coach Rollins’s starter pistol and pull the trigger in synch with Casey while she pointed the flare gun at Olivia. The flare gun, which Olivia had borrowed from her dad, looked
very impressive from the audience (especially now I had painted it black), but the starter pistol made a much more convincing sound.

“We’ll take it from your second-to-last line, Casey,” Mrs. Grimsby commanded from the front row.

“You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you Victoria?” Casey asked menacingly, pointing the flare gun at Olivia.

“Lila!” Olivia exclaimed, in Victoria Goodrich’s voice. “You mean it’s been
you
all along? How could you?”

With a very convincing expression of absolute terror, Olivia took two halting steps backward.

Casey let out an evil laugh that was truly astonishing, given her tiny frame and innocent, wide-eyed features. “How could I not?” she asked Olivia’s character icily. “I’m the only one who deserves to see a dime of the old bag’s fortune—and now there will be one less person in my way!”

I pointed the starter pistol into the air; when Casey pulled the trigger, I shot with her.

The resulting
bang
made me jump; when I came out from behind the living room wall, my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear a thing. Terrance yelled something from the back of the theater. I had to wait for my ears to clear before I could tell what he was saying.

“We can see the light bouncing off the lenses in your glasses back here,” he informed me. “Can you take them off and try it again?”

I dutifully removed my glasses, and we took it again from the top.

Two deafening bangs later, both Terrance and Mrs. Grimsby appeared to be satisfied I could reliably shoot the gun at the same time as Casey, without reflecting any strange lights. I made a mental note to buy earplugs before opening night tomorrow.

When Act 4 finally ended, Mrs. Grimsby released the tech crew, but kept the actors around to give them notes. As Luc and I walked to his car, I caught sight of Nate, standing alone in the dark just outside the auditorium door.

“I’ll be right there,” I told Luc, who nodded in understanding and continued alone to the car.

Nate saw me coming, and for a minute I thought he was going to bolt inside. But he sat down instead. “Hi,” he said when I came within earshot.

“Hi. Do you need a ride?”

“Nope. Olivia’s taking me home—I’m just waiting until she’s done.”

“What happened to Terrance?”

Nate brightened for a second, the way he used to when he had something good and juicy to tell me. “Terrance has a date,” he said wickedly.

I raised an eyebrow. “A date! With who?”

“I can’t say.” Nate shook his head. His face suddenly lost its mischievous smile and settled back into the determined frown he’d been wearing for the past three weeks.

“I didn’t know you and Terrance were so tight,” I said, desperate to keep the conservation going. “You keeping his secrets now?”

“Maybe,” he said, still frowning. “Terrance is actually a good guy. He’s been helping me through some stuff . . .”

He trailed off. More secrets. From the boy who had once known all of mine.

He must have been thinking along the same lines, because he looked up at me with sudden eagerness. “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine. Secrets, that is.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” I lied.

“Bull,” he said quietly.

I bit my lip. “Is this where we are, then?” I asked miserably.

“I guess so.”

“All right then.” I turned to go. I’d never walked away from Nate before in my life, but just then I didn’t think I could bear being around him one second longer.

“Are you happy, Addy?” His voice trailed after me.

About what?
I thought to myself.
About how I’m in love with my fake boyfriend? About how I can’t tell my best friend about the most exciting, scary, and unbelievable things that have happened to me in my entire life? About how I
’
m starting to think of that same best friend the way I think of my parents in the picture beside my bed
—
as a stranger?

But you can fly
, a small voice in my head pointed out.
You can see beautiful, wonderful things others can’t. You can be happy about that.

“I’m happy,” I said dully without turning around.

“I’ve seen you happy,” Nate argued. “This isn’t it.”

I can fly
, I repeated to myself. “You don’t know everything about me.”

“I think you’re right,” Nate muttered.

I walked slowly toward the car, tears clouding my vision. Before they could fall, I sniffed and scrubbed my eyes hard with the palm of my hand. I wasn’t going to let myself cry. Not in front of Luc.