The theater had one shower in the backstage bathroom. The water didn't heat up, so I rinsed myself and scrubbed the green paint the best I could without getting completely wet. Novah located some towels, and Jules found a plaid dress in the costume room for me to wear. I hated dresses, but it was better than nothing.

There was a bit of soap, but I didn't know how long it had been sitting there. I washed the green paint from my short hair. Then, toweling off, I put on the ugly yellow and pink dress.

"Could be worse," Jules shrugged, and they handed me a pair of fifties-style saddle shoes and a pair of bright orange and black striped knee socks. "Sorry, it was all I could scrounge up in your size."

"I'll just look like an extra from Peanuts," I shrugged and put on the shoes and socks. 

Novah smirked. "All you need now is an outlandishly big bow and some bad curls."

I squeezed the water from my hair and sighed. My short hair stuck up in all directions like I'd stuck my finger in a light socket. Green paint still crusted a few ends.

"Well," Jules said. "You've looked worse. Remember that homecoming promposal?"

The football players left the glitter bomb in Shelby's locker to ask her to homecoming a couple of weeks ago. I'd been in the locker below her, retrieving my books, when she triggered the mechanism that set off the mess.

It forced me to skip half a day of school to clean up. Jules and I spent hours trying to get all the glitter off me.

They were trying to make me feel better, but I still looked, in places, like the Wicked Witch of the West—not my best look.

"We could leave," Jules suggested. "If you don't want to go back out there."

"No," I said. "I'm not going to run away this time. Besides, if Jack can show up to rehearsal with a black eye, I think I can deal with a little paint."

"That's the spirit," Novah smiled. 

Jules nodded at me. I opened the door of the dressing room, and that's when I heard the scream. We rushed into the theater just in time to see Kai and Carson pulling Juan off Jack as Hugh dragged the quarterback further from the fight.

"What's going on?" I asked. "A girl takes five..."

Hugh released Jack. His right eye was still blackened, but now his nose was bleeding, and there was a cut above his left eye. 

Juan's face was a bit bloodied as well. His lip was split, and he was fighting to escape Carson and Kai.

"Let go of me," Juan spat, and Kai released his arm. He pulled away from Carson and glared at them both.

My father's favorite line from Shakespeare he used when my sisters and I fought when I was little, spilled out of my mouth. "Where are the vile beginners of this fray?"

"Not the time for Romeo and Juliet, Rita," Anton said, and I wasn't sure how he wasn't yelling. "Mr. Perez, Mr. Garrison, because this production is a school function, I have the power of a teacher. I cannot allow fighting in my theater. I'm assigning you detention to be served at school."

"I don't care," Juan glared vehemently at Jack. "Garrison's a jerk."

Anton looked at Jack. "You both get detention."

Well, it was a first. Anton had never directly disciplined his nephew in front of the cast. Right now, though, he seemed more sad than angry.

Carson whistled. "I didn't think you had it in you, Anton."

Our director ran his fingers through his hair. "It might be best if we packed up for the day. Go home, and we'll reconvene tomorrow."

"I'll walk you out, Juan," Kai offered, but Juan walked past him and stalked out of the theater without another word.

Samantha called after him." See you tomorrow, Juan, same time, same place."

The theater door slammed shut. Hugh, Carson, Novah, and Kai gathered up their belongings. Jules sat down by the door to wait for me. They were quiet and nice that way.

Shayna left next. She was silent but didn't seem to be in a hurry to chase after her beat-up boyfriend. Carson, Kai, and Hugh walked out awkwardly, whispering in hushed tones. Samantha followed them, but she didn't seem too bothered.

Jack was standing apart from his uncle. Lilly was gathering up her things from the lighting booth. She was looking at her brother with fear-filled eyes.

Jack's face was swollen, and there was blood on his shirt. I wasn't sure if it was his or Juan's. He didn't even move as I approached him.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Why do you care?" He snapped.

Jack never behaved like this. He was always so kind and helpful. He bawled his fists and glared at me through the blood crusted on his face.

"Is that how you treat everyone who's remotely nice to you?" I asked.

"Juan thinks I'm a spoiled rich kid," he rolled his eyes. "He hates me. Likes to remind me how useless I am. He got the girl. Big deal. I don't know what his problem is."

He wasn't smiling. I glanced at Anton, but he was preoccupied with his phone. Jack shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down.

"Are you okay, Jack?" I looked at him. "You don't seem yourself."

"I have a lot on my plate," Jack mumbled.

Lilly walked up to her brother. "Jack, we have to pick up Maddy from soccer practice."

Anton stepped forward. "We'll see you tomorrow, Rita."

It was a subtle hint, and I took it to leave. I walked out of the theater with Jules. They started up their old blue minivan they'd dubbed Calcifer.

They were quiet until they reached the highway. "I never thought there'd be an actual fight in the theater."

"I've never seen Jack fly off the handle," I said. "It was kind of scary."

"I know you've only gone to school with us a few months, but Jack is..." they paused. "I've known him since Kindergarten. He's always been well-mannered and kind, but no one can be Mr. Perfect forever. He has a dark side, just like all of us."

"You just wear your dark side on your shirts," I said, gesturing to their shirt about some death metal concert. "Jack must internalize it."

Jules shrugged. They glanced at their Jack Skellington pendant on their dashboard and pulled into the driveway of the suburbia house my father decided to rent for the year from the university he worked for.

"I'll text Lilly later and make sure Jack is okay," Jules said. "Shouldn't be too hard. I used to babysit her when she was in elementary school. She might know what's up with her brother."

"She may not tell you," I said, opening the car door.

Jules shrugged. "Lilly is... she's more open than Jack. She also likes to talk through problems, while Jack tends to be tight-lipped. I'll let you know what I dig up."

I exited Jules's car. Walking up the drive past the rosebushes, the landlord insisted we water, so I unlocked the front door to walk into my house.

It looked like a library exploded in the living room. Books lay all over the floor. Loose papers littered the coffee table. My father, Dr. Jacob Finch, a professor of British Literature, sat in the eye of the hurricane. His little round glasses had slipped to the bottom of his nose, and his graying hair was greasy. I'd have to remind him to shower later.

"Rita," he said. "How are you?"

"Daddy," I said, stepping over a volume of Shakespearian supplementary reading. "We just got out of tech rehearsal. Did you eat lunch?"

"Lunch?" The perplexed look on his face told me the answer. "I did eat some of those delicious rice crunch treats you bought."

My father was one of those people who would lose his head if it wasn't secured firmly to his neck. He loved Shakespeare and research. His search for knowledge throughout my childhood took us across the United States and a few semesters in England.

My mother wasn't home that often. My father didn't enjoy living on or near military bases. She also got transferred far too often, but she was an ace fighter pilot. My two older sisters were in college. They'd gotten as far as they could from our father and his crazy Shakespearean theories. Mara studied bioengineering, and Izzy was studying speech pathology.

I didn't mind my father's eccentricities. I listened when he rambled on about Shakespeare. His world made sense to me somehow in a way it didn't to my sisters.

"I'll get dinner on, so we don't have to order takeout again," I said. "What do you think of mac and cheese?"

"A capital idea," my father smiled. "I need to finish up this little bit on Prospero. How was your rehearsal?"

"It was a tech rehearsal," I sighed as I went to the kitchen. "I worked on painting backdrops. My clothes got ruined by a little accident with the paint, so I borrowed a costume from backstage."

My father nodded. "Good. Good. Do you think Prospero was a true magician or just a user of tricks and circumstance?"

I didn't want to get wrapped in another of my father's debates at the moment. Dodging the chance to answer, I entered the kitchen to pull a box of mac and cheese from the cabinet.

"I suppose it would be both," my father said. "Though he does appear a true magician like the witches of Macbeth... I wonder... this universe he was building... perhaps a bit more mystical."

My father's thoughts always seemed to meander like this. His research was thorough. He'd helped recover and restore one of Shakespeare's lost works a few years ago, which was why the field of academia tolerated him at all.

I worked on the mac and cheese, trying to ignore my father. Once I got the water boiling, I poured the noodles and waited.

My phone went off, and I pulled it out of my pocket. The caller ID read Tasha. I pressed answer and held it up to my ear.

"Rita, how are you?" Tasha asked. "I just got off the phone with Hugh. He said Juan and Jack resorted to blows today."

"Yeah," I said. "It was a mess. I kind of didn't see the fight, but I saw the other boys pulling them apart. They seemed really angry. Then Anton dished out detentions."

"To his nephew?" Tasha sounded like her jaw was on the floor.

"I know," I said.

"I've known Jack and Juan a while," Tasha said. "Juan's got a bit of an unfriendly rivalry with Jack, who doesn't seem to care about it one way or another. Hugh said that Juan was talking about Jack's privilege before he snapped. I've never seen Jack lose his cool before."

"That's what Jules said," I stirred the macaroni and turned the heat down. "I tried to talk to him afterward, but he still seemed pretty upset."

"Hugh said that he thought they were fighting about Shayna again but that their conversation didn't feel like it," Tasha said. "Juan's a bit of a hothead, but Jack threw the first punch. It's hard to believe that Jack came to rehearsal with a black eye."

"When I saw him come in, he was wearing a baseball cap, which I did think was odd," I said. "But he was kind of hiding his face.

"That is strange," Tasha said. "Maybe Carson will know more. He's been Jack's next-door neighbor for years."

"I didn't know that," I said.

"Carson doesn't like to brag his family lives in the Castle Heights neighborhood, but his parents are pretty rich," Tasha said. "He got an expensive electric guitar for his birthday a few weeks ago."

"Let me know if you find anything conclusive," I said. "If we can stop all the infighting in rehearsals, things should go smoother."

"I agree," Tasha said. "I'll call Carson. We'll talk later, hon."

I set my phone aside and finished up the mac and cheese. My father made his way over to the dinner table and smiled when I set a bowl in front of him.

"Something is bothering you, isn't it, Rita?" He said.

"Just some theater drama," I said. "No biggie."

"A very Shakespearean production then," my father smiled. "Don't let troubles get you down, my dear. Take arms against them. Fight fate."

I resisted the urge to laugh. My father was very overly dramatic about a great many things. Instead, I just swallowed another bite of noodles.

"I'm sure it will all work out in the end," I said.

"Well," my father smiled. "As Shakespeare said it, all's well that ends well."

I just nodded and excused myself to do homework. Surely, rehearsals would get better. They had to get better.