A Shot in the Shadows

Mics: Check!

Flynn chooses Thursday morning to haul his usual dressing room stuff into the theater. He almost drops his box in the parking lot: it's full of posters from shows he's been in and signed playbills and photos of his friends and family and the odd item here and there.

The cast of teenage boys comprises of only Flynn, Cameron and Zac. It took a bit of organizing and asking the opinions of all the managers nearby before they were finally settled into a four-man dressing room across from the adult rooms, and the teenage girls all situated right down at the end of the hall. The kids were all shuffled into the joined dressing rooms upstairs, which has a direct passage to their schoolroom. They're a bit tight on space, with the theater holding both an actual theater plus management offices and rooms for all the courses and classes, but they'd managed reasonably well so far.

They're supposed to be trying to get in a full dress rehearsal. Flynn's not really supposed to be scheduled for anything until the afternoon, but regardless, he finds himself being hustled down to hair and makeup minutes after he emerges from his dressing room.

"Take those earplugs out and listen to people, would you?" Mr. Harding tells him, leaving him in the care of the makeup crew.

They barely touch him, just adding a bit more color to his cheeks before sending him down to the end of the hall to pick up his flannel shirt and jeans for his entrance in the ensemble. What Flynn really wants to do is plug himself back into his phone and chill in a forgotten corner, or maybe go find Riley to mess with. Instead he's steered up to the stage where his clothes are already in the quick change area. He keeps his attention there for long enough to figure out which are his Andrew clothes and which are his ensemble clothes before focusing his thinking on the school's last football game. 

Mr. Harding comes by a few minutes later, finding Flynn sitting on the floor by his clothes, listening to music on his phone. After telling Flynn off for getting his jeans dirty, he then drags him around the stage, mapping out every path Flynn has to take during the show for his quick changes or to find his props before sending off to get a mic.

When Flynn arrives, Riley is leaving, a mic just emerging from under her hair. She makes a face at him before grinning wickedly.

"Heads up," she says, trying to suppress a laugh. "Pain is coming."

Flynn's confused by that, until his hair has been parted and rearranged and combed back into play and he's told that Riley used up the last of the mic tape. No one can find any Scotch tape either: someone comes up with a roll of duck tape and cuts out a sliver to tape Flynn's mic into place.

After that fiasco, Flynn's called up to start running through the show, because some miracle has enabled Zachary to get his shirt torn on something backstage.

Mr. Harding had walked everyone through what needed to be done backstage earlier, so the dress rehearsal goes off almost without a hitch. The lighting crew is already well prepared, and so they get the added benefit of working with almost all the lights. Flynn's finally found his perfect approach to Annie's character in one scene: for some reason that makes him especially happy and he's in the middle of one of his best performances of a number when his sound cuts off mid-belt.

Flynn continues holding the note, but stops looking at Annie and instead looks out at the audience, finding Mr. Harding, who shoots him a puzzled look before turning to find the camera that's feeds into the screen that the sound guys would look at.

A moment later the band stops playing: the conductor makes some sort of gesture that Flynn doesn't quite catch, but he shuts up anyway.

"Well," Annie says. "That was interesting."