CHAPTER XII

- part of your world -

[Esther]

As Esther walked through the door leading backstage after another gruelling Biology lesson the next afternoon, Eli greeted her with an enthusiastic grin and a can of blue paint, which she thrust into her hands.

"Backdrop," she said simply, gesturing to the wall at the back of the stage. "We were suppose to have it finished by half term, but..." she looked over at the wall, which remained steadfastly unpainted.

"Half term's in three days," Esther said, slightly warily.

"Yep!" Eli replied brightly. "So work hard this session! Anyway, I gave you the best bit this week: the sky."

Esther smiled. "Is that just a way of telling me I'm shit at painting?"

"No, it's actually really cool. You get to go up on the ladders and stuff..."

It was a full house today: one of the rare days when Anthea didn't have Orchestra rehearsals and Robin and the rest of the tech crew weren't caught up in doing the stuff up in the booths. Eli had hooked her speakers up to her phone and some gentle rock was playing over the chatter. Esther found Robin crouched next to the wall, studying the concept work Eli had sketched for the backgrounds with a half-drying paintbrush tucked behind his ear.

"'Sup," he said.

Esther ran her eyes over the wall. He was working on a crowd scene, and the wall was dotted with paintings of people. They had a sort of cartoonish style to them, but not in a simple way: the kind of thing you could look at and notice how much detail went into them, but looked pretty basic if you just glanced at them. "Did you paint all these?"

He stretched his hands over his head and nodded. "It's taking ages. Have you come to take over?" he added hopefully.

Esther shook her head. "I'm doing the sky," she said.

Robin grinned.

"Don't say anything," Esther warned. Even Eli's quick, rough sketches were more artistically accomplished than anything Esther could hope to achieve.

"Nah, to be honest, I'm jealous," Robin said, innocently. "You're like, Queen of the Sky. All I get are these town scenes, you know?"

Sometime during the painting session, the curtain leading to the stage twitched, and a familiar face popped his head round the side.

"Woah, its busy today," Ezra said. "Or is this some kind of secret backstage party?"

"Backstage is always a party," Eli grinned, brushing her hair out of her face and smudging it with blue paint. "Aren't you meant to be rehearsing?"

"CC had a weird moment of weakness and let us take a half-hour break," Ezra explained, manoeuvring himself awkwardly round the curtain. He was still in crutches, but apparently he'd be out of them before the end of November. "I think some of the others are still in shock..."

Esther smiled. CC had a reputation for being militant about rehearsals, especially when they got closer to the festival date. Sometimes you could hear him barking orders at the cast while they were rehearsing at the same time they were working backstage, which was probably why Eli had started bringing CDs with her to play in the background.

Eli tossed him a paintbrush. "Great. You're hired. The backdrop's not gonna paint itself."

"Is this how the rest of you got involved in this?" Ezra said, hopping over to the wall.

"Eli can be very persuasive when she needs to be," Anthea said wryly. She wasn't painting today, finishing off the hand embroidery Esther had started last week. Esther kept forgetting she was there, and then getting startled when she said something without anyone expecting her to.

Ezra looked up at Esther, perched on the top of a stepladder smearing the wall with sky blue. "Have you gotten taller lately?"

Esther smiled. "You could say I've been experiencing a bit of a growth spurt."

"So, how's the music going? Robin not holding you back, is he?"

"I probably am," Robin said.

"Stop being so modest," Esther said sternly, pointing her roller at him.

Ezra grinned. "She says it like it's an order."

Robin raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright," he said, and then assumed an excessively cocky air. "I'll have you know I'm practically running this whole operation. Esther just bums around playing on these rubix cubes all day..."

Esther laughed a little, and then a thought occurred to her. "Actually, I was thinking of doing some vocal pieces to shake things up a little," she said, looking down at Ezra. "You don't happen to know anyone who..."

Ezra didn't hesitate. "You should ask Caitlin."

"Oh, yeah," Esther said, remembering the two were singing together. "Would she be too busy, though, with the festival..."

"Don't worry about it," Ezra said. "She's a fan of your work; I'm sure she'd be happy to help. I'll see her after school, so I can ask her for you."

"Would you?" Esther said, grateful. "Thanks."

Painting the sky wasn't too bad, and even with someone of her calibre of painting, there was no way she could screw it up. Esther quickly fell into a rhythm. Dip shake the brush off, roll. Rinse and repeat. With Ezra, Robin and Eli working on the more technical crowd scene, progress started to pick up. Eli and Ezra quickly fell into avid conversation. Esther joined in sometimes, but for the most part she couldn't get a word in edgeways, so she focused on finishing off the sky. Likewise, Robin seemed occupied; whenever she glanced down at him he was staring intently at the figures he was painting, his tongue poking out of his mouth.

When her shoulders were aching and she was too tired to move her arms anymore, Esther decided it was time to take a break. She clambered down from the ladder and got one of the cereal bars she'd started stashing in her bag: she was staying in school until five or six in the evening most days and desperately needed these little snacks to keep her going.

She wandered over to where the others were working, surveying their progress.

"It's coming along pretty slowly," Esther remarked, standing over Robin's shoulder. They'd gotten about a third of the way in, which was impressive until you considered there were supposed to be three people working on it, and Esther had pretty much finished the sky by now.

"I suppose it is," Robin said. "Eli's supposed to be helping too, obviously..." he said, with a pointed glance in her direction. Eli and Ezra were leaning against the unpainted part of the wall, not even trying to look like they were painting anymore. Eli must have heard her name being mentioned, because she looked over at them and frowned.

"I'm helping. I'm delegating and shit. Esther, the sky is beautiful!" she said, coming over, and then turned to assess Robin's work. "Not bad," she said, nodding. "I'll touch it up this weekend."

Esther cracked up laughing at the petulance on Robin's face.

"This person looks a little like Anthea," Ezra said, running his hand along the wall and smudging the paint slightly with his fingers. "Shit."

Eli punched him in the shoulder. "Look at what you're doing to Anthea's face! She'll be so disappointed...!"

"What happened to my face?" Anthea asked, from her chair.

"Nothing! Your face is beautiful, dear! How's the embroidery going? Looks great!"

Ezra chuckled and continued looking at the wall, keeping his fingers away this time.

"Oh, look. There's you too, Eli. And Esther..."

Esther looked over to where Ezra was pointing and sure enough, there was a small figure in the crowd with freckles and a mess of ginger hair, headphones over her head and a slightly thoughtful expression on her face. "That's so cool."

Robin looked a little embarrassed. "Yeah, I mean...I was running out of inspiration, I guess..."

"Oh man, Robin, did you put all of us in here?" Eli asked, also studying the wall. "That's so touching, in a sad kind of way."

"We're gonna work on your compliments, Eli," Robin said.

"My compliments are great, you're just jealous," Eli said. "But it's gonna be so sad when they paint this over for spring productions," she added, half to herself.

"Wait, what?"

"Oh, you didn't know?" she asked innocently, and grinned. "My first time on backdrop I went all out, and then I came back in the spring term and it was back to that ugly yellow they use. I think a bit of my heart died. Oh well, treasure it while it lasts, kids. Let's take a photo!" She raised her voice. "Backstage selfie, guys! Gather round!"

They managed to persuade Anthea to come over – apparently she was camera shy – and clustered around the little cartoon figures of themselves and took a few pictures.

"Great!" Eli said, looking them over. "Now we can look back on this moment and reminisce about how fun backstage work was."

"I'm pretty sure you're the only one who finds this fun," Esther said, smiling.

"That's because she wasn't even working," Robin grumbled, making her laugh.

"Okay, okay, I get it. I'm working now," Eli said, patting his head. "All of you guys, too. Back to work!"

---

a/n:

Thanks for waiting!! It's a short chapter (this is short for me...) and a little filler-y, but there are some pretty fun chapters coming up, so bear with me :) 

I've actually been considering not publishing the next three chapters, for various reasons, which is why this update took so long. I think in the end I just decided to publish everything and work from there, so yeah! Hope you liked it :D