If one more person trips over this cable, I am going to electrocute someone on purpose.
"Left foot, not right," I say, grabbing the back of a freshman's hoodie before he can clothesline himself on the snake running from the sound board to the monitors. "It's literally bright orange. How are you missing it?"
"Sorry," he mutters, cheeks flushing, clutching his drumsticks like a life raft as he hurries past.
The wing smells like dust, sweat, and burning dust from the stage lights. On the other side of the curtain, the jazz trio is halfway through their second song, all brushed cymbals and show-off piano runs. The crowd's applause leaks in waves through the velvet, rising and falling like the ocean in a bad metaphor.
I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor with a roll of gaffer tape, turning the stage edge into a hazard map—little flags of silver every place the floor dips or a cable crosses. The tape sticks to my fingers, to my jeans, to my soul.
"Coleman!" Aman's voice snaps over comms, too loud in my left ear. "How's stage right looking?"
"Held together with tape and resentment," I say into my headset mic.
He snorts. "So, fine. Any obstructions on the drummer path?"
I glance down the narrow channel we've left clear between the curtains and the stacked props. "Clear. Unless they're allergic to cardboard clouds."
"You're a saint," he says. "Stand by for mid-set lights bump in… three, two…"
The rig above us hums, shifting gels. A wash of deeper blue slides over the curtain edge, turning the dust motes into tiny floating planets.
I lean back on my hands and let myself breathe.
The blackout earlier went… okay. No one fell, no one screamed "fire," Principal Shah didn't yank the mic out of Eli's hand. From the booth, Aman sounded smug. From down here, it felt like being unplugged from the world for ten seconds and then slammed back in.
I keep replaying it anyway. The way the emergency aisle strips took half a beat longer than they should have to flick on. The jitter in the house lights when they came back. The half-second where my eyes refused to adjust and my brain filled in the dark with everything that could go wrong.
"You're fine," I tell myself under my breath. "If something was going to explode, it would've done it already."
"Talking to the cables again?" a voice says behind me.
I don't jump. I've trained that reflex out. I just turn my head.
Eli steps around a stack of folded risers, still in his "host" blazer, mic at his hip now that he's off. His hair is damp at the temples from the lights. He smells like stage makeup and victory.
"I talk to whoever listens," I say. "They're more reliable than most humans."
"Ouch." He presses a hand to his heart, wounded. "Harsh from my favorite lighting gremlin."
"Don't call me that."
He grins, then sobers. "You seen Rhea?"
There it is again. The question that keeps ping-ponging around backstage all night like a dropped ping-pong ball no one wants to admit they lost.
"Not since before the band set," I say. "Why?"
"Lena's looking for her. Something about a phone call from the principal." He shrugs. "And I wanted to run an idea by her for the closer. Crowd chant, maybe. Or confetti. People love confetti."
"No confetti," I say instantly. "Do you know how long it takes to sweep that out of the wings? Until graduation."
He laughs. "Fine, no confetti. You sure you haven't seen her? She was supposed to be stage left for the blackout check-in. Lena said—"
"I know what she was supposed to be doing," I cut in, a little sharper than I mean to. "She took the practice room keys and vanished. I assume she's putting out some fire in admin land."
The key hook flashes in my mind—empty on the side of the backstage table, the little metal ring that usually lives there gone. Rhea's lanyard jangling as she rushed past earlier.
"She'll surface," Eli says. "She always does. Like a really stressed-out mermaid."
I snort. "That's a terrible metaphor."
"You're welcome." He glances at the curtain, where the jazz trio is sliding into their final chord. "Hey, can you do me a weird favor?"
"Define weird."
"Can you run to the music room and grab the extra mic stand?" he asks. "The one with the broken clutch. We're out of spares back here and Mr. Kline is having a minor existential crisis about the spoken word mics."
I frown. "Why that one? The clutch is—"
"He likes the weight on the base," Eli says quickly. "Says it doesn't wobble as much. Please? I would go, but Shah wants me in the lobby for some donor photo op, and if I say no he'll media-train a freshman in my place."
I consider telling him to deal with his own problems. Then I think about Mr. Kline's dramatics, and about how long it would take for someone else to find the right stand without undoing my carefully taped cable routes.
"How long do I have?" I ask.
"Jazz kids are wrapping, then the poet. You've got, like, five to seven minutes before anyone panics." He flashes me a hopeful smile. "You're the best."
"Debatable," I say, but I'm already pushing myself to my feet, peeling tape off my knees.
He claps my shoulder and disappears toward stage left, slipping effortlessly between two actors in half-costumes. People part for him without thinking. Voted Most Likely To Talk His Way Out Of Anything, senior superlatives. Accurate.
I unplug my headset and loop it around my neck, trading one tether for another. The world narrows to my route: out through the narrow backstage door, down the service hall, cut into the main corridor, past the dead camera, to the music room.
The dead camera is my fault.
Two hours ago, when we were still wrangling flats and platforms, I'd looked up at the shiny black dome in the corner and thought: absolutely not. I am not being immortalized on some grainy security feed crawling under risers with my butt at center frame.
So I'd taken a scrap of poster board, slapped a piece of tape on it, and stuck it over the camera lens. Temporary, I told myself. Just for tonight. Just so I can work without feeling watched.
Now, as I pass under it, the cardboard still sits there, a stupid little eyelid closing the hallway's one officially sanctioned eye.
I keep walking.
The main corridor is quieter than it should be. Most of the audience is in their seats, not milling. The distant pulse of music seeps through the doors in low frequency waves. Two student ushers lean against the wall by the lobby entrance, whispering to each other, their lanyards flashing as they gesture.
"Hey, Iris," one of them says. "Do you know if we're still doing the lantern thing outside?"
"Ask Lena," I say without slowing. "If it's not on the schedule, it's not real."
They laugh nervously like I've made a joke.
The further I go toward the music wing, the thinner the sound gets. It's like walking away from a party and into a library—the noise replaced by the hum of the HVAC and the faint squeak of my boots.
The fluorescent lights in this corridor always feel a shade colder, buzzing just on the edge of hearing. Trophy cases line the walls, reflecting my distorted silhouette back at me in gold and glass.
At the bend before the practice rooms, I notice a small scuff of silver on the floor. Tape, the same kind I've been laying down all night. It leads like a breadcrumb toward the corner.
I frown. I didn't tape out here tonight. I did that yesterday, during dress rehearsal.
I follow it anyway.
When I round the corner, the music room door looms at the end of the hall, memo taped in its middle like a warning label. DOOR TO REMAIN LOCKED DURING ALL PERFORMANCES… The corners of the paper curl from where fingers have brushed past.
The handle looks normal. The narrow window is dark.
I wrap my fingers around the knob and twist.
It resists—just for a second, a tiny catch like something stuck in the latch—then gives with a soft, reluctant click. The door swings inward a few inches, just enough for a sliver of darkness to spill into the hall.
I push it open with my shoulder, the hinges sighing.
"Hello?" I call. "If you're in here making out, this is your one chance to pretend you're a music stand."
Silence.
No answering giggle, no rustle of someone shifting behind the piano. Just the low hum of the air vents and the faintest rattle of something against something else—metal on metal, soft and irregular.
The main lights are off. Only the tiny red and green LEDs on the amps and mixers glow in the dim, like a cluster of distant eyes. Emergency strips along the baseboards cast a weak line of light around the perimeter.
I step inside and let the door fall mostly shut behind me. The smell hits first: dust, old carpet, and something else underneath—sharper, like ozone and something spilled.
"Okay…" I murmur, reaching along the wall for the switch.
My fingers brush cold plastic and then the little nub of the dimmer. I flip it up.
Nothing happens.
The emergency strips don't change. The tiny LEDs keep their low, watchful blink.
Great. Either someone killed the main breaker for this room or a fuse blew. Maintenance is going to love that.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust, but slowly, shapes emerge. The stacked chairs in the corner. The grand piano, its lid down, glossy and dumb in the half-light. Two mic stands near the front, one upright, one at a weird angle like it's bowing.
And on the floor beside the nearer stand, half in shadow, something that should not be there.
A hand.
For a moment my brain refuses to process it as anything but an object. A prop glove, maybe. A mannequin part borrowed from the theater closet.
Then I see the chipped dark nail polish on the thumb. The faint, smudged ink stain on the side of the index finger where a pen rested too long.
"Rhea?" I say, the word sticking.
No answer.
The rest of her resolves slowly, like a photograph coming up in a tray. Her body is on its side, one leg twisted under her in a way my dancer friends would yell at each other for. Her head is near the base of the mic stand, hair splayed out, one of the pens from her bun lying a few inches away. The stand itself leans toward her, as if mid-fall, its heavy base tilted.
There's a coil of cable snaked across the floor, looped around her ankle. The cable disappears under a tilted amp and re-emerges near the wall, where it's plugged into a power strip that sits half-off the riser, like someone yanked it.
For a second, everything goes very, very narrow.
I am aware of my own breathing, too loud in my ears. Of my heartbeat pounding against my ribs. Of the way the emergency strip light cuts across her face, throwing half of it into shadow and leaving the other half too pale.
"Rhea." My voice seizes on her name this time. I drop to my knees, the impact jarring up my spine. My hands hover, useless, then settle on her shoulder, her wrist, not sure where to touch.
Her skin is warm. Not hot, not cold. Just… warm. Her eyes are closed. There's a small, ugly blotch blooming at her temple where it must have met something hard.
"Hey," I say, louder. "Rhea, come on. This isn't funny."
She doesn't move.
The rattle I heard before sharpens in my ears. It's the mic stand, I realize, its loose clutch vibrating faintly with every distant bass hit from the auditorium. It ticks against the base like a bad metronome.
I fumble for her neck the way they tell you in first-aid training videos we never actually got around to doing. There. A pulse. Thin and fast under my fingers.
"Okay," I whisper. "Okay, okay, okay."
My stomach twists. I am not the person people call in emergencies. I am the person who knows where the nearest roll of tape is, not where to press on someone's ribcage or how to keep their airway open.
But I am here, and no one else is.
I hit the floor with my other hand, scrabbling for my headset. It's still looped around my neck. I jam it over my ears with one shaking hand, mashing the talk button.
"Aman," I say. "Aman, pick up."
Static hisses. For a second, I think the channel's dead. Then his voice crackles through, faint over the band. "Yeah? Iris? You're dark on my board, where'd you—"
"Music room," I cut in. "It's Rhea. She's—she's on the floor, she's not waking up. I think she fell. I don't—" My voice jumps up an octave. I force it back down. "We need someone. Now."
There's a half-second of silence on the line.
"I'm calling Shah and the nurse," Aman says, all the joking gone from his tone. "Don't move her unless you have to. I'm sending Mr. Kline down the hall. Stay with her, okay?"
"I—yeah." My mouth is dry. "The lights are out in here."
"Breaker probably tripped," he says. I can hear the rustle of paper as he yanks the run sheet around. "Don't worry about that. Just… talk to her. Keep her with you."
Keep her with you. Like she's already half somewhere else.
I drop the headset back around my neck so I can use both hands. My knees hurt from the hard floor. There's something wet under my left one; I shift instinctively and realize I've knelt in a small smear of something dark.
Ink, I tell myself. Marker. Anything but what it could be.
"Rhea." I lean close, trying to ignore the faint humming in the walls. "Hey. You're going to hate it if you miss your own cultural night. Get up."
Her lashes don't flicker. Her chest rises and falls, shallow.
A shape on the floor near her hand catches my eye. A strip of silver tape, stuck to the carpet. My kind of tape. The end of it curls up like a tongue.
There shouldn't be tape in here. I taped the stage and the backstage corridors. I didn't touch this room today.
My brain tries to catalogue it—brand, length, whether I can recognize my own tear marks like a fingerprint. Anything to avoid the bigger, worse cataloguing my eyes are trying to do.
Footsteps pound in the hallway. Voices, too many at once.
"Down here!"
"Move, please, move—"
The door bangs fully open, smacking the stopper. Harsh white light lances into the room from the corridor as someone props it with their foot.
Mr. Kline bursts in first, tie askew, trumpet pin glinting on his lapel. He freezes when he sees us, then drops to his knees on Rhea's other side, his own hands suddenly as awkward as mine.
"Oh God," he breathes. "Nurse! In here!"
A second later, Ms. Ortega, the school nurse, is in the doorway with her emergency bag, breathless. Behind her, Principal Shah's silhouette blocks part of the light, flanked by two other adults.
The room fills up, the air going thin. Hands move me out of the way, gently but firmly.
"Iris, sweetheart, give us space," Ms. Ortega says, not looking at me as she leans over Rhea. "You did great. Thank you."
I scoot back until my shoulder hits the piano. My legs tingle with pins and needles. My hand brushes something cold and metal: the base of the mic stand, tipped farther now that people are crowding around.
From this new angle, I see the power strip more clearly. It's not just half-off the riser; it's upside down, its switch jammed awkwardly against the carpet. One of the plugs is halfway out, bent.
I also see something else: a smear of the same silver tape on the corner of the strip, like someone peeled a piece off and forgot about the rest.
Tape on the strip. Tape on the floor. A little constellation of my handiwork where I never put it.
"Head injury," Ms. Ortega says briskly. "Possible fall, possible electrical involvement. We're calling paramedics."
Shah's voice is low and controlled. "Already on their way. Everyone else, back to your positions. We don't want to alarm the entire auditorium until we know what we're dealing with."
Someone tries to herd me toward the door. I resist just long enough to snag my headset from the floor and sling it around my neck again. The familiar weight steadies me.
Out in the hall, students cluster, faces pale and wide-eyed. Someone asks, "Is it true? Is it Rhea? What happened?" Another says, "I heard there was a short circuit," like rumors can fill the space where facts aren't yet.
I can't make myself answer any of them.
The wail of a siren floats in from far away, thin through the brick and glass. It starts small, grows, then levels out as it nears. My stomach wants to turn inside out.
Time goes strange after that.
Paramedics appear, red jackets and calm voices and equipment that looks both too big and too small for this room. They move in practiced choreography—neck brace, oxygen, vitals. Words like "responsive" and "pupils" and "possible concussion" float past me without docking.
At some point, Aman appears at my elbow, his face drawn, headset askew. "Hey," he says softly. "You okay?"
I look down at my hands. There's a faint smear near my left thumb, darker than the tape adhesive, not quite ink. I rub at it with my right palm until the skin burns.
"I found her on the floor," I say. My voice sounds like it's coming from the bottom of a trash can. "She must have tripped on the cable. Or the stand fell. Or the lights—"
"It was an accident," he says quickly. "These rooms are a nightmare. We've all said that."
Accident. The word sits in my mouth like something too big to swallow.
Behind him, the paramedics lift Rhea carefully onto a stretcher. Her arm swings once before settling against her side, fingers loosening. A pen rolls out of her grip, clattering softly to the floor.
It shouldn't bother me, that tiny sound. But it does. Because earlier, when I came in, there was only one pen on the floor.
The other one must have fallen later.
Or I missed it.
Or it doesn't matter.
"Ready?" one of the paramedics says. "On three."
They maneuver the stretcher toward the door, turning it just enough to clear the amp. As they pass, one of them steps squarely on the strip of tape near the power bar, grinding it into the carpet. Another bumps the mic stand, knocking it flat.
"Careful with the equipment," Mr. Kline says weakly, then seems to hate himself for it.
The stretcher rolls out. The room feels suddenly bigger and emptier and wrong.
"Come on." Aman's hand hovers near my elbow without quite touching. "They need us back there. Power's stable now; we have to keep the show moving."
Keep the show moving. The phrase feels obscene.
But I nod, because the alternative is collapsing on the dusty carpet and letting someone else drag me away.
As we step into the hallway, I glance back one last time.
The music room looks almost normal again. Chairs, stands, piano, cables. The memo on the door, the emergency strips, the little red and green LEDs.
And in the middle of the floor, where her head was, one thing that doesn't match: a bright splash of dried paint on the carpet, the exact same shade of teal I used earlier to touch up a backdrop.
I know I didn't bring that paint in here.
It shouldn't be there.
I open my mouth.
Then the faint roar of the crowd down the hall swells as someone opens the auditorium doors, and the noise rushes over me like ocean water, filling my ears, my throat, my head with something that isn't questions.
"Later," I tell myself, fingers closing around the headset cable until they ache. "You can say something later."
I let the door swing shut behind us and follow the sound back toward the stage.