“I can’t wait to see it in person,” Paula said. “We’ve already booked our flights for the first night of previews. Your brothers are just staying for the weekend, but your grandma and I will be there almost a week. And yes, we’re seeing the show every night.”
“Aw, Mami, I can’t wait.”
“I can’t either, sweetie.”
They talked for a few more minutes before Jules ended the call to find her castmates and see what they were doing for lunch. But once she was in the hallway, she couldn’t resist posing for a selfie by her name on the door.
“Oof. I hope you’re not letting that go to your head.”
She turned to find Sophie standing a little way down the hall, watching her with an amused smile. “Oh, please. Like you wouldn’t take a selfie if it was your name on the door.”
“I absolutely would,” Sophie agreed. “Want me to take one for you?” She held her hand out for Jules’s phone.
“Thank you.” She handed her phone to Sophie, then posed for several photos in front of her dressing room door.
“Here you go.” Sophie handed back the phone. “They ordered sandwiches for us upstairs.”
“Really?” The production team for this show really seemed to be taking good care of them. That wasn’t always the case, and it made her extra appreciative when she encountered a good working environment like this one.
“Yep. You coming?”
Jules nodded as she fell into step beside Sophie, trying out the stairwell Sarah had pointed out to her earlier. “So where’s your dressing room? Are we all on this hallway?”
“I think so, yeah,” Sophie said. “I’m down the hall, sharing a room with Tabitha.”
“Oh cool. She seems nice.”
They came out at the top of the stairs, in the hallway to stage left as Sarah had said. Together, they walked to the break room, which was already bustling with cast and staff members, busily filling plates as they talked about the morning’s rehearsal. Jules and Sophie made their way to the food set up in back. They fixed plates and found empty seats across from each other at one of the tables.
Jules sat beside Tabitha, who was midway through a story about a bad date she’d been on over the weekend, and from there, they went around the table with everyone trying to outdo each other with terrible first date tales. “What about you, Jules?” Amir asked.
She thought for a moment. “The worst would have to be the time a guy invited me to see a show with him, but he thought it would be an amazing surprise when I got there to find out he wasinthe show. I mean, I would have been thrilled to watch him perform, but it was a bit much on our first date for me to sit alone in the audience, looking like I’d been stood up. Afterward, he took me out for a drink and asked me questions about his performance, to make sure I had fully appreciated his art.”
Across the table, Sophie snickered.
Jules narrowed her eyes at her. “And you? What’s your bad date story?”
“This girl showed up to our first date completely wasted and then fell asleep with her head on my shoulder during the movie we went to see, and she snored super loudly through the whole thing.”
“Yikes,” Tabitha said, giggling under her breath.
After lunch, they assembled on the stage to rehearse a group dance number. Jules was glad for the chance to work off some of the nervous energy that had been building inside her all morning. She hadn’t counted on being in front, though, leading the routine as Simon taught them the steps.
Still, she was a competent dancer, so she threw herself into the choreography with the same enthusiasm she channeled whenever she was on stage. Things went fairly smoothly for the next hour or so, until Micki joined Jules up front.
Simon stood in front of them, demonstrating the next move. “And five, six, seven eight…” he called as he moved.
Jules and the rest of the cast followed, dancing their way across the stage. Micki took an extra step, hip-checking Jules so hard, she almost lost her balance. Micki gave her an exasperated look, as if the mistake had been Jules’s. She ignored Micki, moving to the side to give herself more room, but as hard as she tried, they couldn’t seem to find their rhythm together.
“Not like that, Jules,” Micki exclaimed when they bumped into each other for the fourth time. She proceeded to repeat the movement in an exaggerated fashion to demonstrate it for Jules.
“I’ve got it,” Jules told her, clinging to what remained of her patience.
“Let’s try it again, ladies,” Simon said, and started them from the top.
But as the afternoon wore on, she and Micki struggled to get in sync with each other. Eventually, Jules got so flustered she couldn’t tell which one of them was messing up. Maybe she was the problem after all. Kari sat quietly in the audience, watching with a slight frown, and Jules’s cheeks grew uncomfortably hot. What if Kari decided she’d made a mistake in choosing Jules for the lead?
“Let’s take ten,” Kari called, and Jules winced.
