(8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
(8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
Everything was a countdown. The seconds to the end of songs, the steps from right-wing to left, the words in the teachers’ complaints; Chase would predict the end, then count backwards from eight. If he was more than a second off, he pinched himself in the leg.
Janie was hiding above the other dancers. Above him. Whatever she was deliberating, she would have to deal with it alone.
(8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
The town’s inhabitants were gathered in a crescent around The Theater, roaring with the thunder, unaware that The Stage was binding them in the glow of its electric foot-candles. Chase had never witnessed such a massive crowd at a Sparkle Motion show. Every spectator couldn’t possibly be related to a dancer... only a handful of the kids were from Michigan, and only teachers and dedicated parents made the cross-country trip. But why would anyone else show up?
The judges looked like a row of condoms in their clear raincoats. Four of them seemed ready to snap because Pauline refused to call off the show. Lorrie, however, smiled and bopped her head to every song. The judges scored each dance by hand instead of computer, then gently filed each scoresheet into plastic bags to be sorted and tallied before Friday’s ceremony.
April May’s station was reassembled on stage-left during a break, though it didn’t make communication with Chase any easier.
“Ha! Ha ha ha!”
Chase twirled around. The laughter was coming from a Barbie Girl, bending over and holding her kneecap. Crap. “Are you hurt, hon?” he asked.
The girl laughed harder.
He bent down and held her leg. She removed her hand from her knee to reveal gashed tights with a splinter jutting like a fence post from her kneecap.
(8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
A stage dad barged through the back door. “The fucking parking lot is flooded!”
“There are kids back here!” Chase yelled, then pulled up a chair for the bleeding dancer.
“Is somebody gonna get my trailer outta the mud?” the man yelled.
The Barbie song ended (5, 6, 7, 8) and the red phone light beckoned Chase as thirteen pink girls skipped off stage-right (they loved him!) “Hold on,” Chase told the man. “Just a second, hon,” he told the girl. “What?” he asked April over the phone.
“The Stage is soaked! Run the broom!”
“What’s a broom gonna to do?” He slammed the phone before she could answer, grabbed his sweeper, and stepped to The Stage while the dads rolled off the giant Barbie boxes.
(One step, two steps, three steps, four steps...) The crowd cheered. Through the gusts and pelting sprinkles, they clapped and screamed and whistled for Chase.
“We love you, stage manager!” a group of girls yelled from the front row.
When Chase returned to the wing with a sopping broom, Pauline was waiting with a piece of paper. “It’s a drop form,” she said.
“Only one?” he asked. “Even with the storm?”
“Mark her off your list.”
Chase let the broom smack the podium, then grabbed the sheet from his mother, found his first-aid kid, yelled “Fireflies, you’re next!” and rushed a tweezers and three bandaids to the injured girl. “Think you can pull it out?”
YOU ARE READING
The Brandywine Prophet
General FictionSuburban life has turned William Carmel from a drug-fueled creative prodigy to a gentle husband and father. When the voice of God commands him to construct a million-dollar amphitheater on the hill behind his home, the budding prophet obeys and unle...
