Wiping condiments out of the pockets of a black leather jacket with useless school paper towels was not something I expected to have to do that evening, but student actors were full of surprises. The thin, brown towels seemed to repel and spread messes instead of actually cleaning them.
"You girls about done in here?" Ms. Hart, the theater director, was standing in the doorway to the empty classroom where the costumes were stored. When her gaze landed on the jacket in my hands and the crumpled, soiled paper towels in the trash can, she sighed. "You should've made Austin clean that up."
"Austin bolted out of here," I grumbled. "And the costumes are my responsibility."
"I told her the same thing," Kaitlin piped in. "I said she should drop the jacket on his front porch with a note in red marker that says, 'Clean Me!'"
"Then we'd never see it again," Ms. Hart muttered. She crossed the room, leaned over to peer into one of the pockets and wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Just leave it. It's going to have to go to the dry cleaners anyway." She stood up straight, pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up and pressed her hands against her back until it cracked audibly. "Let's get out of here. It's been a day."
"Thank you," Kaitlin groaned dramatically as she hopped down from the table she was sitting on, as if I had been keeping her there against her will.
Kaitlin had succeeded in recruiting me for the costume coordinator position for our school's annual musical Little Shop of Horrors and we'd run a dress rehearsal that afternoon. Kaitlin played Audrey, ditsy flower shop employee and girlfriend of sadistic dentist, Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. Opting out of a wig, she went bleached blonde for the role. Whenever Kaitlin slipped into a New York accent when she wasn't onstage, Sophie and I would mutter "method actress" under our breath to annoy her.
But even though we poked fun at her, I admired Kaitlin's dedication, not just to her role, but to the whole production. She stayed with me to help reorganize and hang all the costumes on the racks after the cast carelessly tossed everything at me at the end of the day. Except for Austin, who left his costume in a pile on the bathroom floor.
Austin played Seymour, meek flower shop employee and caretaker of a human blood craving plant. In retaliation for squirting green glitter glue onto the handkerchief he had to hand to Kaitlin onstage during the first dress rehearsal, Austin had filled the pockets of Scrivello's leather jacket with mayonnaise and mustard.
People who thought jocks were obnoxious had probably never witnessed the backstage antics of theater kids. Their loud, attention-seeking behaviors, flirting that bordered on harassment, and pranks were next level. But then again I'd never seen the inside of a locker room full of sweaty athletes all jacked up on adrenaline and victory.
I quickly learned that the expectations for the costume coordinator went beyond picking out some sixties style clothes from a thrift store and hanging around backstage for a few performances just in case a button fell off and needed to be sewn back on.
I had to deal with receipts and a budget. I had to account for and organize every component of all the costumes, including shoes and accessories. Somehow I became in charge of all the stage makeup, too. Thankfully, I didn't have to apply it, but I did have to clean up the mess left behind. I felt like a mother to twenty-two oversized preschoolers set loose in a Sephora.
Early on, I realized the job was going to be stripped of everything that could have made it fun. The girls in the cast wanted to find their own costumes, so I was left with the boring task of searching the thrift store racks for men's dress pants and shirts. The actress playing Chiffon refused to wear secondhand clothes, and I offered to sew her a dress from a vintage pattern. But she said she didn't want to wear "a crappy homemade dress that's going to unravel onstage." She ordered herself a cheap vintage style dress from Amazon and I secretly hoped her polyester reproduction would make her sweat atrociously under the stage lighting.
Sewing an applique of a bloody tooth on the back of a white lab jacket for Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. turned out to be the most fun and creatively satisfying part of the job. Overall, my costume coordinating stint wasn't what I'd hoped and I was glad it was almost over.
When I spotted my car in the parking lot, I could feel the built-up tension in my muscles start to melt away. I was one step closer to my happy place.
"Austin ate Flaming Hot Cheetos right before our kiss today. What should I do to get him back?"
"Hmm?"
"How should I get revenge on Austin for his Cheeto breath today?" Kaitlin asked.
"Oh, I don't know," I said absentmindedly. "Just please don't defile any costumes."
"You're already mentally at the love shack aren't you?"
"Maybe," I admitted with a sly grin.
"No judgment here. If I was with someone and they were staying alone in a house on the lake, I'd be there all the time, too." Kaitlin sighed deeply. "Jealousy and bitterness, maybe, but no judgment."
"Bitterness!"
"Well, yeah. Laura and Tyler. You and Pete. Sophie and Eric. We only have a few more months together, but you're all slipping away from me already."
A single mascara-tinged tear trailed down Kaitlin's cheek, forming a gray rivulet through her cakey ivory foundation. Kaitlin got weepy about the finality of senior year at least once a week. I never realized she liked high school so much.
"Don't tell anyone, but you two are my favorite," she confided in a low voice even though we were alone in the empty parking lot. "Based on the rare occasion that you're spotted together in public, it seems like you and Pete might be the real deal."
I happened to agree with her. We were my favorite couple, too.
Sophie and Eric's couple status had already extended a few days beyond the usual four week expiration date for Eric's relationships and seemed to be going strong, at least based on their behavior at school. But there was something unconvincing about them as a couple. Maybe Kaitlin the unshakable romantic detected it, too. It was like Sophie and Eric were leads in a romantic comedy who were cast because they were both hot, but lacked chemistry and may have actually hated each other offscreen. But what did I know? I tried my best to avoid them when they were together.
Sophie was still suspicious of Pete and I was no longer speaking to Eric, due to the Christmas Eve deception he never apologized for, but Sophie and I were back to our normal selves when we were together. Maybe Kaitlin had gotten to us with her constant reminders that soon the day would come when we'd stop seeing each other on an almost daily basis. I only wished that my friend wasn't physically attached to Eric Anderson so much of the time.
Maybe I was just jealous. Those two could paw at each other all day long while I couldn't even text Pete because he didn't have a cellphone. I was stuck with calling the landline at the cottage at night to talk to him before I went to sleep. Most nights I was so tired I fell asleep to the sound of his voice and woke up at some point to the thunk of my phone hitting the floor.
Sometimes we managed to squeeze in some time together during the week after he got out of work when I wasn't waitressing at the Shipyard, drowning in homework or working on costuming tasks. There were days when we'd plan to meet during our lunch breaks, halfway between Palmer and the auto shop where he worked in Mayville, at a tiny park overlooking the frozen LaSalle River. We'd spend ten minutes steaming up the windows in my car, then I'd eat my peanut butter and jelly and carrot sticks on the drive back to school while I daydreamed about seeing him again.
I hadn't traveled back in time accidentally or on purpose in over a month. There hadn't been any time reversal incidents either. Not even when I witnessed Eric get elbowed in the face during a basketball game. Like every other spectator in the gym, I cringed as blood poured from his nose and watched him play the rest of the game with tampons poking out of his nostrils.
With Pete there in 2017, I probably had no need to go back in time anymore. And anyway, being with him was its own sort of blast to the past. I could still hardly believe it, but he was only forty minutes away instead of sixty years. But after a long week of working, waiting and wanting, even those forty minutes could seem like an eternity.
