The Brandywine Prophet

11.7 The Chorus Room

Sunday: one day to the National Championship

(5, 6, 7, 8)

The hilltop provided a foreboding panorama of the darkness in the west. The stage, however, was still feeling the sun’s temper, and Chase’s armpits were soaked (5, 6, 7, 8).

The carts, cables, fiberglass set pieces, and boxes of merchandise were carried to the stage in an endless series of back-and-forths. Pauline stood center-stage, shouting her commands and demands and outright insults to her minions. 

She had spent the morning inspecting the theater with Mr. Carmel. Chase knew his mother loved the theater, but she still had to assure herself that it was a wise investment. The championship show always drove her a little nuts. When Chase was six, a water pipe broke in a bathroom at the Chicago venue and flooded the merchandise tables with sewage. Dancers and teachers ran in every direction. Chase stood clear of the growing puddle of shit and watched his mother’s eyes from across the lobby. He saw the life within them as if the leaky challenge was not something to fix, but something in which to bathe (5, 6, 7, 8).

Without Janie, every step was centered on a crack. Every song on the radio (in a store, in his mind) started and ended with (5, 6, 7, 8). He felt anger—actual anger—whenever a dancer exited to the opposite wing. He would wonder why they didn’t like him, where he went wrong, why he couldn’t have been a better boyfriend. He counted things. Everything. The holes in his bedroom ceiling, the bumpy pattern of stitched flowers on the airplane seats, the flashing white street lines from the Gerald R. Ford Airport to the Holliday Inn, the steps it took from the loading dock to the podium and back again, and back again, and back again... (5, 6, 7, 8)

The mounting ticks took their toll on his school work. When his grades dropped low enough to keep him from his sophomore year, Pauline signed him up for summer school (5, 6, 7, 8).

His expectations for the week were dismal. Janie made their breakup very clear. She yelled at him. She refused to see him after the day he caught her telling her father about another man’s sins. She rarely responded to texts. She never answered his calls. Chase entered his fifteenth year of life crying on his bed because a birthday wasn’t a birthday without Janie.

(5, 6, 7, 8!)

But all hope wasn’t lost. There was a glimmer of hope in a text he received last night; four words that meant death in a healthy relationship, but provided hope in a relationship that was about to flatline: “We need 2 talk.”

Janie found him at the peak of the afternoon heat. She was glancing down the stage-left stairwell, now blocked with yellow and black caution tape. Her form... her head, hair, hands, feet, fingers, and toes were everything Chase missed, and no other girl—no cheerleader or supermodel or chemistry parter—could ever replace those eyes. He started to speak, but she shushed him, then nodded to the catwalk and sauntered to the ladder.

(5, 6, 7, 8) “We’re supposed to get rain tomorrow,” he said when they were comfortable and secure (forty-three gashes in the safety pole’s black paint).

Janie didn’t respond, but laid her forehead against the pole and sighed.

“Do you think our parents will cancel the show?” he asked.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Chase bounced his leg and the whole catwalk shook. “I thought you said you wanted to talk.”

“I did.”

“I was hoping you missed me.”

Janie touched her cheek. Her nail was a paintless stub, the tip bitten, the last sliver of protein scratching against her scar.