Rehearing without Jack and Anton was ten times worse than any previous rehearsal. Jamie was struggling to run lights, curtain and still read off Jack's lines in time. She had a little trouble remembering our names and mainly resorted to calling us by our characters.

We weren't doing all that great of a run-through, either. Hugh tripped over one of the wooden trees. Novah tripped on her costume. Kai called for his lines too many times, and Shayna seemed transfixed, staring at one particular spot on the floor.

Even Carson wasn't doing much better. It was difficult for him to mime a choreographed fight as Charles without Jack as Orlando to fight. Jamie gave him a few pointers, but Samantha pointedly told Carson he looked like a drunk elephant.

Jamie looked so frustrated that she told us all to take a twenty-minute break when Jules missed their cue. Since Novah was trying to fix her costume, I volunteered to find them. 

Heading backstage, I attempted to locate Jules. They weren't in their usual corner chair, and they weren't in the green room. I finally found them holed up in the unisex bathroom backstage, clutching their stomach as they sat on the tile floor in front of the toilet.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Everything today was a disaster," they moaned. "We're going to flop at the festival."

"Jules," I said. "We're going to get Jack and Anton back. Everything is going to be fine."

"Rita, you're actually good at this," Jules looked up at me, and some of their heavy mascara was running down their face. "I shouldn't have even auditioned. I'm terrible. I'll mess everyone up."

I looked at my friend and smiled. "You're not terrible."

"If I go up on that stage, I'm going to hurl my guts out," Jules said. "I don't belong here."

"Rita," I heard Jamie coming down the hall. "Did you find Jules?"

"I can't do this," Jules said, moving to close the bathroom door, but I caught it with my foot.

"Jules is in here, Ms. Skylar," I said, and Jules sent me a venomous look.

Jamie came into the bathroom and looked between Jules and me. She seemed to read and understand the situation almost at once.

"You're nervous," she said. "I threw up before my first show when I was eleven. I was a singing spoon in Beauty and the Beast, and I thought I would trip all the other girls in a kick line."

Jules looked at Jamie strangely. "Really?"

"Everyone gets nervous from time to time," Jamie said. "Trust me, I've seen professionals get sick at a dress rehearsal or before a show. You just have to relax. I once forgot all the words to "Good Morning Baltimore" in my first open call when I was sixteen. It was mortifying. Jitters are normal. You just have to learn to work through them."

"Then how come I'm the only one with their head in a toilet?" Jules asked. "Rita is like actually good. My acting is bad. Not like everyone else."

Jamie smiled. "Did you know I helped Tony cast the play? I saw his recording of each actor. I remember your audition. Your hands shook a little, but you were able to capture the character uniquely. I liked your spirit."

Jules looked up. "You liked it?"

"You reminded me a lot of a young me," Jamie said. "And you've gotta discard all that negative energy telling you that you aren't as worthy as everyone else. You're a good actor, Jules. You just need confidence."

"Jules, you're always poised at school," I said.

Jules sighed. "Being me is pretending a lot of stuff doesn't get to me. Everyone sees me as the weird kid. Being me is hard. I never feel like I fit in."

"Use that on the stage," Jamie said. "It's a spark. Trust me. You can act. You have to believe in yourself. And you fit in here, Jules. On that stage, you can be anyone you want."

Glancing down at my phone, I turned it on. My heart jumped into my throat when I spotted a missed call from my father.

My father hated cell phones. If he didn't need one to call my sisters in college or contact me when I wasn't home, he wouldn't have one at all. He didn't even have a smartphone, preferring the flip phone he'd had since I was born.

"I need to take a call," I said.

Stepping out into the hallway, I called my father back. Gripping my phone tightly, I waited as the phone dialed out. The longer it took, the faster my heart seemed to beat. What if he'd gotten himself in trouble again? He picked up after the eighth dial tone.

"Rita, Rita," he said. "Good, this blasted thing still works."

"Daddy," I said. "What were you calling about?"

Picturing him sitting on the floor of the living room in the center of his hurricane of books with his glasses hanging crooked on the end of his nose was far too easy. He was probably in the middle of his new paper on Prospero, trying to draft the same sentence for half an hour.

"Have you seen that book on nautical navigation your mother gave me when she was here?" He asked.

"Nautical navigation?" My father had so many books that it was often hard to remember which ones he had purchased and which belonged to the library, much less the titles of said books.

Closing my eyes, I attempted to picture the mess in our living room. The last time I'd stepped over the sea of books, some titles slipped under the ottoman.

"Look under the ottoman," I said, trying to smile. "Maybe it slipped there."

"Ottoman, hum," he mused. "The Ottoman Empire collapsed centuries ago. I don't think I have any books on that. Shouldn't need to. Wrong era. You sure, Rita?"

I sighed. "The big blue cylindrical piece of furniture you were stacking your Elizabethan source books on is called an ottoman, Daddy."

There was a large amount of rustling. "Ah, Rita... yes. I think I found it. How's... where are you? Pottery spinning, right?"

Pottery was one of my sisters' hobbies. My father sometimes couldn't tell us apart even though our interests were all very different.

"I'm at rehearsal," I said.

"Oh," he said. "How's that then?"

"It's miserable," I said honestly. "We can talk later. Finish that paper on Prospero."

"Smile, Rita-bear," he said. "Bye, honey."

I hung up before he could attempt to fumble around with the end-call button. He was worse at technology than my grandparents.

Walking back on stage, I found Shayna standing there, scrolling on her phone. She looked up when she heard me coming, and her smile turned into a frown.

"Everything okay, Rita?" She asked.

Forcing my grimace into a smile, I sighed. "My father lost his book on nautical navigation."

"Yuck," Shayna said. "I was seeing if I'd heard from Jack."

"How is he?" I asked.

Shayna looked down, examining her costume slippers. "Not sure. He hasn't messaged me today."

"But you have been talking to him," I said. "That's more than the rest of us. He's gone silent. I texted him twice and haven't gotten a response. I decided that it might not be the best idea to badger him. If he wanted to talk, he'd reach out. I saw him today in the halls after sixth period. He looked sad."

"It's rough for him," Shayna said. "My mother said they're hopeful his sister will recover fully, but she lost a lot of blood."

I knew she didn't want to talk about it. That had been why she'd been eating lunch the last two days with us instead of her friends.

That's when the arguing started backstage. Samantha's voice carried through the theater. "Why are you upset?"

"Upset?" Juan's voice carried even louder. "Why would I be upset?"

"Not my fault you can't stand it that Jack is getting more attention than you," Samantha said. "Sorry, the world doesn't revolve around you, Juan."

Shayna froze. It must have been awkward to hear her ex fighting with the girl he'd cheated on her with.

"So the world revolves around Jack, then?" Juan demanded. "I'm so sick of everyone hero-worshiping him. What is so great about Jack Garrison anyhow?"

"You're conceited," Samantha said. "The world doesn't revolve around Jack. You're just mad that Shayna was right."

"So what?" Juan said. "Maybe I owe Jack an apology, but I'm not going to kneel before him like the rest of you."

"I get that you think we all worship Jack, but he's way nicer than you are sometimes," Samantha said. "I don't get why you're so jealous of him."

Even though we couldn't see them, I could imagine the steam coming out of Juan's ears.

"Jack gets everything," he said. "He's the quarterback. He's on the honor roll. His tragedy makes him go viral. He's perfect."

Samantha laughed. "Jack isn't perfect."

"Maybe he's not," Juan said. "But everyone treats him like he is."

"So what?" Samantha said. "Get over it."

Samantha barged back on stage. Her face was as red as her freshly dyed hair, and her fists were balled. She looked like she was about to scream.

When she caught me staring at her, she smiled. "Sometimes, I just want to slap some sense into him."

"I know the feeling," Shayna murmured.

Samantha pulled a tube of fuchsia lipstick from her purse and popped it open. "Anybody hear from Jack tonight?"

"Juan is right," I said. "We should stop focusing on Jack. We've got a performance to do."

"We can't do the festival without Jack," Samantha said.

"No," Shayna said. "But we can rehearse without treating his absence like a nuclear disaster. We're treating Jamie little better than a substitute teacher."

Hugh walked on stage. " She's right. We need to focus."

"Do any of you have a clue what we're supposed to do if Anton and Jack can't do the festival, though?" Samantha asked.

Jules and Jamie walked on stage. Jules had washed their face, and it was strange to see them without any makeup. They looked younger, and their stormy eyes seemed lighter.

"It doesn't matter," Jules said. "The show has to go on, right?"

"The show must go on," I said as the rest of the cast walked on stage.

"Get in a circle," Jamie said. "Cross your arms and grab the person's hands next to you. I'm going to teach you something that Tony and I learned with our first director. We all recite a fun little rhyme together, and all spin out when it's over."

"This sounds dumb," Juan grumbled.

"It's a way to come together and celebrate," Jamie said. "The rhyme is a little tongue twister."

She taught us the rhyme, and we recited it back to her a few times before we were ready to do it for real.

"Ready?" Jamie asked.

Carson grinned and counted us all off, "1-2-3."

"Whatever the weather if snow,

Or whatever the weather if sun.

Whatever the weather, we do the show

And be sure to all have fun."

We all spun in the circle and beamed at each other. Even Juan had a goofy grin on his face. I laughed, and Jamie looked down at her script.

"Let's finish act four," she said. "And I'll let you go for the night."

We all took our places. New unseen positive energy floated around my friends. Somehow, Jamie's silly little rhyme made all the difference.

No one missed a line. No one knocked over the scenery. Jamie recited Jack's lines, and we pretended he was there. Somehow, despite the anarchy, everything settled into place.