Look Both Ways(14)

“Good.” He looks at the paper for a minute. “Okay, we need three Source Four thirty-sixes, three twenty-sixes, and a nineteen. Let’s go.” I trot along behind him, hoping this is going to start making sense soon.

Source Fours turn out to be big black lights with clamps attached to the tops. We cart them up a narrow, winding, metal staircase; Zach carries four at a time, but I’m barely able to manage two. The floor of the mid-gallery is a metal grid, and I can see what’s happening on the stage below my feet. It’s a little disconcerting, and I feel a tiny wave of vertigo, but I don’t say anything.



I watch Zach hang one of the lights, and it looks pretty easy—slip the clamp over the bar, attach this thin piece of metal he calls a safety cable, tighten the bolt with the wrench. “That doesn’t look too hard,” I tell him cheerfully.

He looks at me like, How did I get stuck with this moron? “It’s not,” he says. “Put a twenty-six there and a thirty-six here, okay?”

“Sure.” I heft one of the lights up onto the bar. “So, where are you from?”

“Chapel Hill,” Zach says.

I dig my wrench out of my pocket. “I’ve never been. Do you go to UNC? I’ve heard it’s really—”

And that’s when the wrench slips out of my hand and falls through the grid in the floor.

“Heads!” Zach bellows at the top of his lungs, and everyone on the ground ducks and takes a step back. The wrench smacks the stage floor with an enormous bang about five feet from Courtney, who looks up and shouts, “What the f*ck, dude!”

“I’m so sorry!” I yell back.

Courtney shakes her head. I’m too high up to clearly hear what she says, but I’m pretty sure it’s something like, “Figures.”

Zach wheels on me. “What the hell was that? I told you to tie your wrench off!”

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat. It seems like those are the only words I’m going to get to say today. “I didn’t know what that meant.”

“Jesus. If you don’t know what something means, you ask! She could’ve ended up with a fractured skull! I know you’re used to flouncing around and listening to people clap for you, but what we do up here isn’t a game. Do you understand?”



“Yes,” I say, and I’m suddenly afraid I’m going to burst into tears.

Zach pulls a knife out of his belt and flips it open, and for a second I have this crazy thought that he’s going to stab me and get rid of me once and for all. But instead he storms over to a spool of thin black rope, cuts off a piece, and hands it to me. “This is tie line,” he says, like he’s speaking to someone who might not understand English. “Tie one end to your wrench and the other end to your belt loop. Don’t ever let that happen again.”

“I won’t,” I choke out.

“Good. While you’re downstairs getting the wrench, go down to the storage room—it’s the staircase next to the office—and get me two ten-foot jumpers, two feds, and a sidearm, okay?”

For a second I think he’s messing with me, throwing around words that don’t even mean anything to make fun of all the jargon and tell me he knows how I feel. I smile at him gratefully, but then he says, “Okay?” again, and I realize those were actual instructions.

“Um. Two ten-foot jumpers, two feds? And…”

“A sidearm,” he says.

I know he told me to ask for clarification if I don’t understand something, but everything in storage will probably be labeled, so I should be able to figure this one out on my own. “Okay,” I say, and I head downstairs.

The air in the basement is dank and clammy and smells vaguely chemical, and one of the fluorescent lights is making an annoying buzzing sound. But at least nobody down here is yelling at me, so I hang out by the bottom of the stairs for a minute and take some deep breaths while I tie my wrench tightly to my belt loop. Finally, when I’m feeling a little calmer, I head down the hall until I find a door with a piece of tape across it that reads “LIGHTING STORAGE.”



The room is packed floor-to-ceiling with crates of equipment, and absolutely nothing is labeled. The only objects I recognize are some normal lightbulbs like the kind we have at home and a bunch of disassembled Source Fours. I don’t see anything that resembles jumper cables, which I’m pretty sure is what Zach asked for. What am I even doing here? I should be doing vocal warm-ups with Zoe and Livvy and Jessa in a rehearsal room right now.

There’s nobody else down here, so I grit my teeth and make one of those frustrated screamy noises. It feels good to let some of my aggression out, so I do it again, louder this time, and plant a good, solid kick on a box of metal clamps. It hurts me a lot more than it hurts the box, and that makes me even angrier. I swear and massage my throbbing toes through my sneaker.

“Um, everything okay in there?”

I whirl around, and there in the doorway is the tall guy who was sitting behind me at the company meeting last night. He’s got a can of paint in one hand and a cordless drill in the other.

“I, um,” I stammer. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was down here.”



The guy nods at the box. “Those C-clamps getting fresh with you?”