Summer has been Lily McBride’s favorite time of year since she was a kid, because that’s when the Brookesville Playhouse opens its doors. Now that she’s an adult and works as their tech director, Lily wants more for her beloved Playhouse: a larger audience, a longer season, and exciting shows to draw new patrons.
This
year, though, she also wants Genevieve Mason, a pretty
starlet-in-the-making from the local university, recruited for the
season’s tech crew. Genny throws her heart and soul into the place too,
adding her own dreams of representation to the ‘must-have’ list, and
using her sweet voice and surprising flare for pyrotechnics to draw the
crowds in droves. They work so well together, it’s not long before their
summer crush blossoms into a steamy affair.
Lily’s
falling hard, but always feels like Genny’s holding something back. And
then there’s the dreaded Brookesville Arts Council—supposed to be a
support system for all things cultural, instead dragging the Playhouse
down with their old-fashioned stubbornness. There are a lot of hurdles
to jump and egos to deflate before they can get what they want, both for
the theater and from each other.
Excerpt
The
park was familiar; it fit me like the proverbial old glove, and it
always quieted my head when it wouldn’t stop. I wandered slowly,
parallel to the thick woods, out toward the wide-open field and the big
hill. The whole of Brookesville Park was hills, because, welp, welcome
to Appalachia, but these ones were sloping, great for careful hikes and
relatively safe woodland exploration. The swish of overlong grass around
my ankles and the smell of green was calming.
I
turned around to look at the gaping barn from a distance, and it hurt a
little. Home, more than the Victorian even, in some ways. At least, I
wanted to be here more than I ever wanted to be there, and that had to
mean something, right?
Movement
caught my eye after a few moments of staring and ignoring my Hot
Pocket. I glanced toward the trailer to see Genevieve coming my way, her
feet bare in the grass, her peasant skirt blowing around her calves. If
it had been anyone else, I might’ve been annoyed at the interruption.
But Genny in a field—hey, I wouldn’t love the theater so much if there
wasn’t something in me that wanted poetry. If not for the ramshackle
trailer behind her, I could almost believe she’d crept out of the woods
like some kind of fairy enchanter. Well, one carrying an apple-juice
box, anyhow.
Hell, I’d let her take me away any day.
“Hey,” she said when she was near enough.
“Hey.”
She
smiled and sipped at her juice. “Did it get to you? Mitzi, I mean? It
was just one little sound bite. Everyone else loves the show.”
I shook my head. “Nah. I mean, not just that. It’s bigger than that.”
She turned to stand beside me, close. “So tell me.”
“Do you think I’m pathetic?” I asked suddenly.
She laughed. “What? Why?”
“Because
I’m a college dropout who wants to devote her life to a stupid
community theater that lives in a barn three months out of the year.”
“Lily,
I’m a theater major.” The laugh was still in her voice, running through
it like silken thread. “It’s the most narcissistic, pointless major in
the world, according to society. I want attention, they all say. What
you want—you want to give this place you love the theater it deserves.
That’s the opposite of useless.”
I
took a bite from my Hot Pocket, still feeling a little sullen. “Do you
really want attention? You just…you don’t seem the type.”
“Well, stereotypes don’t always apply.” She was still smiling as she took my arm.
I
stiffened a little, surprised at the closeness and how very, very warm
her skin was, but then relaxed into her. Theater folk. We’re kinda huggy
like that. I just…you know. So hot. Apparently in the literal as well
as the figurative sense.
“Most
actors get the rep fairly, honestly,” she admitted with a little sigh.
“I know that. But my parents raised me different. Really different.”
“Why do you want to do it?”
“Well, I’m not saying I hate attention.”
She grinned, then went back to chewing on her straw. “But I like not
being myself up there. I like making other people laugh and cry and feel
for whoever I am at the time. I like the adrenaline before I go
onstage. I like the community of it. I like…almost everything about it.”
“Except?”
“Except children’s theater,” she said with a smirk.
“You’re just saying that to make me smile.”
“Maybe.”
Well, it worked.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hawthornetaylor
No comments:
Post a Comment