There's probably a really good reason why Zac's standing outside a theatre at about six ten on a Saturday evening. It's already dark out (the sun's not even visible anymore except for a slightly lighter blue above the western horizon). It's September, so it's already getting chilly. In a bizarre twist of weather, the temperature had plummeted during the day. Zac should be at home watching a sports game or killing people on his gaming console or something.
He wonders again why he's out here.
Then Zac remembers that it's because he's been irrevocably in love with theatre since he was four and his aunt brought him to see Annie and then spent the whole show complaining about the lack of "boy orphans".
Sometimes, Zac thinks, life really sucks.
He shoves his hands a little deeper in his pockets and spots a group of people walking on the other side of the road. "Concert tonight!" he shouts. "A showcase of the fine musical talent we have. Tickets sales all go to charities! The show starts at seven!"
No one in the group glances in his direction.
"Brilliant," Zac mutters under his breath. "Of course."
He looks around the sidewalk and frowns. One of the other kids is supposed to be out here with him... except now he's not.
Zac looks around again and slumps against the wall, regretting it instantly as his back freezes. He checks his watch: the show show starts in forty-five minutes, and only a few of the people who had tickets had shown up so far, although there was still was still plenty of time, so Zac had no clue why he was worrying about-
"Hey."
Zac jumps, somehow managing to scrape the back of his neck on the wall. He lets out a strangled sound, twisting away from the wall. Zac's hand flies to the back of his neck as he looks up to see Riley standing on the sidewalk next to him, looking worried.
"Are you okay?" she asks. "I can get Jen or someone out here with first-aid. Do you need it?"
Zac peels his hand off the back of his neck, wincing as it comes off red.
"Oh, wow," Riley says. "I'm so sorry-"
"It's just a scrape," Zac says, gingerly pressing the wound with his bloodied fingers. It stings a bit, but Zac's felt worse. Sure, it will hurt in the morning, but there's really nothing he can do about it.
"What do you want?" he asks Riley, his voice a bit colder than he wants it to be. He's known Riley since forever, first as one of those distant people on the elementary school playground, and then when he became her guide when she'd joined his theatre program. But honestly, he was cold and tired, and injured now as well, and wasn't willing to be patient with anyone: the Devil himself could have risen from the depths of the Underworld and Zac still would have blown him off.
Riley shrinks back, looking wounded. "Sorry," she says again. "I just came to bring you some hot chocolate. And relive you of your shift." Riley 's expression shifted, and some of her trademark snark seemed to make a comeback. "Of course, if you would rather take Harold's shift too and continue standing out here..."
Zac rolls his eyes and walks towards Riley, reaching for the mug she's holding. "Fine, I'm sorry," he says mockingly.
Riley turns and holds the cup just out of reach. "You're not touching this porcelain with those bloody fingers," she says seriously.
Zac has no choice but to duck into the theater and run to the nearest men's restroom, furiously scrubbing the blood off his fingers. He returns to the lobby and joins the gang of teens sitting at the table by the front doors. They're being forced to sell tickets there because tonight's event is not an official theatre thing: the theatre had decided that they weren't going to get anyone to man the box office, and they didn't trust any of the teenagers to root around in there.
Riley hands over the mug of chocolate, and Zac takes a seat behind the table. He sits there, quite content for once to be out of the action. Instead he watched everyone hustle around, trying to finish up the last few tasks before the majority of the audience arrives.
Jenna, one of the ushers (and one of the few teenagers who actually has a job in the building), briefly chides him as she rushes by to bring one of the costumes down to the dressing rooms. Zac doesn't even feel bad: ever since he got out of the callbacks yesterday, he's been helping put up the last few poster and then spent most of his Saturday morning and early afternoon running around the theatre with manuals of all sorts, trying to help the sound and lighting crews finish preparations and fix the two broken lights and one broken speaker.
Needless to say, Zachary is actually exhausted and is of half a mind to go home before the show.
Eventually, Annabell wanders behind him trying to find a poster and screams when she sees the mess that is the back of his neck.
Naturally, her screaming has Riley dropping everything she's doing on the other side of the room to come see what's bothering her friend. Riley already knows about Zac's injury, and as soon as she sees what's happening she'd doubled over, laughing.
Zac is not initially inclined to laugh because Annabell looks mortfied, but seeing her pale face and Riley's inability to breathe makes him crack a smile, and then he's spluttering with laughter too. It honestly feels fantastic to laugh about something honestly amusing, and to Zac it's been too long, what with school starting in the middle of August and all the charities he's been involved with through the theatre and all of the auditions. It feels so good just to let it all out.
Annabell has reached the point where she's now downright indignant, because most of the kids around them have started cracking up too. Zac's sniffling away tears of mirth when Jenna shows up again, done with whatever task she'd been doing beforehand.
It's Zac's turn to be mortified as Jenna manhandles him and his chair to a corner, the first-aid kit in one hand. Zac winces as she applies all sorts of antiseptics and then a large sticky plaster to the back of his neck.
Jenna tops this off by saying, "You're going to sit in this corner in this chair until the show starts."
Zac opens his mouth to complain because Riley started it and it's not fair but he has no shot because all of the nearby males are chortling again, and as Jenna turns to reprimand them, two girls with fluorescent green dresses and half-done make-up rush by.
Zac doesn't need to explain to anyone that this immediately set the whole group off again.
Even Jenna smiles, but then she turns around and tells Zac to stay in his corner... or else.
<-------------------------------------------------------------->
Zac has to sneak in a few minutes before the show starts, but he manages to make it to his second-row seat without disturbing anyone.
He does however manage to almost step on a little girl's toes, and the girl withdraws her feet so fast that she accidentally kicks him in the leg.
Perfect. Just what I need.
Zac drops into his seat next to the girl, refusing the urge to rub his neck.
"Hayley," the girl's mother chides, and the girl slowly puts her feet back on the floor and shoots Zac an apologetic look.
"Sorry," she whispers.
"No prob," Zac whispers back, causing the girl to grin.
After that interaction, Zac is fully prepared to ignore the girl and her mother for the rest of the night. He's in the midst of turning his phone off when there's a motion next to him, and the girl, Hayley, turns and whispers something to her mom.
Much to Zac's astonishment, the woman leans forward and taps the shoulder of the man sitting in front of them. Zac's even more surprised when he recognizes the man and the person sitting next to him as the two writers from the callbacks.
Zac gives the kid points for recognizing the back of their heads.
He tries not to listen in on their conversation, really, he does, but Hayley's mom mentions the word 'callbacks' and he's a goner.
Zac's not able to make out much, but he does hear that the writers don't normally work in this region, but had been in search of a reasonably well-off and well-known theatre to do an off-off-Broadway run of their new musical. They were here tonight to get one last look at the local talent before the cast list was released on Tuesday.
"We hope it's not inconvenient or anything," says one of the men. "But I think we should warn you before-hand that we're due to open in the first or second week of October, and we plan to have at least a week of previews. We know that it's already the first week of September, but the only way we were able to get this production together is to have a very rushed scheldule. So if your daughter gets a role, you'll have to be prepared to give up a lot of free time and a fair amount of school."
Zac's got to hand it to the man: for the writer he sure has a hell of a lot of information about things that shouldn't really be relevant to him.
Both Zac and Hayley could see that the woman had further questions, but before she could start asking, the lights went out. Zac sighed internally and settled down to watch the first "act" of the show.
Zac didn't regret purchasing his ticket, but halfway through the second song he realized he probably could have found something more productive to do with his time. He sat and listened to a variety of people and ages work their way through the classics and not-so-classics: the few numbers that really stood out to Zac were What's Up, Duloc?, two songs from Next to Normal, Luck of the Draw (that's one you didn't see too often), Think of Me (ugh), a song from A Christmas Story and a heavily censored version of a song from Rent that was followed by a five-girl performance of Naughty from Matilda (there was only one performance after that and Zac spent it laughing to himself about the Rent song and trying to figure out how the girls had managed to equally divide Naughty into five parts)
Intermission came, but Hayley and her mom stayed put. So did the writers, so the parent was already leaning forward. Zac and Hayley both leaned a little too.
"We didn't plan on it being so hurried," the other writer was saying. "We have a few friends in the press who already like the material and are willing to come down here to see the show and review it so we have something to show on opening night, but they can only make it in a certain time frame, there's some big thing happening in New York in October so publicity wise we can't wait around."
"And," continued the other man, "we have two networks willing to interview us if we can get the kids and adults up there, but only if the show's running before Halloween."
Zac's mind was blown by the amount of press influence these two dudes had, and so Zac basically heard nothing else except that the theater was already working out a schedule with all the schools that would allow them to be in the theatre as much as possible. And that they were hoping to be able to bypass an off-Broadway venue and get straight into a theater on Broadway itself.
There were more technical things like the kids wellbeing (Zac had no clue what that was about, theatre was a pretty kid-safe occupation, more-or-less) and some concerns over content. That didn't stop Zac from getting hyped up, because wow, there were big plans in place for this show.
Intermission ended, but not before the writer said that they would be using tonight's performance as one last chance to view the prospective cast in action. Just as the lights went down, Zac looked around and saw Mr. Goldman a few seats down, and Ms. Irving a few rows behind him (she looked as disapproving of the whole process as ever).
Zac couldn't help but slink in his seat and suddenly he wished that he would have volunteered to perform. The whole concert thing was in support of charities associated with September 11, and Zac was one of the most generous guys around... but he had passed up his chance out of tiredness. Now he wish he hadn't... Zac didn't know what he wouldn't give to be up their, showing all the casting people just how good a performer he actually was.
Zac got the feeling that beside him, Hayley was thinking the exact same thing.
This was a filler chapter kinda oops.
It wasn't meant to be, but I saw a chance to put information that needed to be in here in now... I could have put it in later, but I wasted twenty minutes worrying about whether or not I'd be able to get in or not.
Most of this chapter will be reshuffled elsewhere after November.
Also on Saturday I drew spaces for each day in November and I filled in all the major events I needed and I threw in a few things I had considered once I saw that I had space, so I actually have more chapters planned than there are days this month.
I was looking at this plan and I thought all of my major events were after Halloween, but I remembered them wrong and they're all placed between opening of the show and Halloween... it's only day three and I've already made the mistake of starting this story in September.
So we're assuming that this is one of those school districts that starts school in August.
But I may try and push events like opening and previews around the storyline which means that this chapter is highly liable to change within the next week. And that the timing makes sense and I won't be squishing a seven week rehearsal period into a three week time slot in the story.
Anyway, that's all I have... thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated and always taken into consideration :)
EDIT: Photo of Zachary is now up.