“Can you take the catwalk? I’ll get the prop room, and Mr. Giacomo is taking care of the spot booth.” Mr. Giacomo is the assistant principal who runs in-school suspension.
“Got it.”
I tie my crescent wrench to my belt loop, stick my hand through a roll of gaff tape like it’s a chunky bracelet, and follow Dr. L to the catwalk door. It’s technically always locked, but before she graduated, Caprice showed me how to open it with a student ID in case of emergencies. I don’t know if Dr. Lochley knows you can do that or not. So she leans in, using the key on her lanyard to open the door.
The air gets hotter as I climb the red metal ladder. Scents ofmothballs and plywood and burnt dust and decades-old cigarette butts assail me.
At the top of the ladder is our old dimmer rack, a twenty-four channel one with red side panels, still emblazoned with the faded logo of an old production company that went bankrupt after its owner was convicted of embezzling equipment from a local news station.
Half the channels have stopped working, the broken modules labeled with pink gaff tape over the breakers. I double-check the working modules are breaker’d off, then duck under a dusty beam onto the catwalk proper: a set of wooden planks that have been nailed down to make a walkway all around the theatre.
The lighting rail runs at chest height, lights clamped every six feet or so, mostly old incandescent PARs and Lekos that got sent up here after the Main Theatre’s rig got upgraded to LEDs. A tangle of orange extension cords runs all around, connecting lights to whatever working circuit we could find.
Orange extension cords (especially ones that have had their ends hacked off and replaced with stage pin connectors by Denise) are very much not up to code.
Neither are the plastic tubs stacked haphazardly on the wooden walkways, shoved halfway into the dusty recesses of drywall that make up the theatre ceiling and cloud.
Something touches my back. I jump, banging my elbow against a Source Four on the rail, and let outan embarrassinga totally justified scream.
“Sorry!” Liam looks sheepish, his hand still raised.
“What are you doing up here?” I rub my elbow; it’s going to bruise. “Your shmoodie is downstairs.”
“I came to help you. And your tag was out.”
“I can handle it.” I tuck in my tag.
Liam doesn’t even know how to do lights, much less how to speed-strike a rig before the fire marshal shows up.
“But I want to help. Dr. L said it was an emergency.”
No one’s ever offered to help me with a code red before. But here Liam is, being all tall, smelling like the pool and clean laundry and lemon candy. He does have long arms, which might be useful.As long as he stays on the other end of the catwalk, I’ll be fine.
“Okay. But watch your step.”
I lead Liam to the corner opposite the dimmer rack, where the longest cables are run. “We’ve got to unplug all the orange cables, wrap them, and store them above the cloud.”
He starts to unplug a light, but can’t get the stage pin connector apart.
“It’s stuck.”
I fight a grin. “You’ve got to wiggle it.” I show him, wiggling the connector until a gap widens and it’s easier to pull apart. In the warmth of the catwalk, his skin smells especially chlorinated. “It’s for safety.”
Safety third,Denise likes to joke. Speaking of which, I should double-check that all the fixtures have their safety cables.
Liam grips the end in his hand and starts coiling the cord around his elbow.
“Stop!” I take the cable from him. “Don’t coil it, it’ll get tangled. Wrap it instead.” I show him, doing a loop, then a counter-loop, over and over as I follow the cable to the end of the row, where I unplug it from the circuit. The cable is missing its tieline,so I pull off a strip of gaff tape and use it to tie the cable.
I stand on my tiptoes and drop it over the edge of the canopy, where no one will look.
“Like that.”
Liam’s got a smile in his eyes. I don’t know why.
“Don’t make fun of me. Doing it this way means the cable will unwrap smoothly when you need it.”
“I wasn’t. I’m impressed.”
