Eighteen
before
They were both cast in the fall play, their senior year of high school.
It was a mystery. A comedy. Cary was the bumbling detective. Shiloh was the lead, an old lady whose diamond necklace had disappeared.
Cary’s mom had hurt her back that year. She fell on some ice. She’d already had enough problems before that—she smoked too much, she had high blood pressure. Now she was stuck on the couch between cortisone shots, and Cary was doing everything. Picking up her meds and dropping off bills. Running his older sister and her kids to the store. He still had his job at Hinky Dinky and all of his schoolwork. He probably shouldn’t have gone out for the play—but he wanted to. And Shiloh wanted him to.
He missed a bunch of rehearsals. Then he took too long to get off book. A couple of the supporting players made snide comments about it. Cary thought about dropping out. Shiloh wouldn’t let him.
Their first performance was great. Shiloh was hilarious as the old lady. Hunched over to seem smaller. With baby powder in her hair.
On the second day, they had two performances—a matinee and an evening show, plus Cary had to get up early for ROTC.
He was off his game that night. He missed a cue in the first act. And then he caught himself spacing out a few times onstage. He hadn’t eaten dinner. He was tired.
There was one moment, after the intermission, when he realized just in time that he had a line—because Shiloh was staring at him, like she was waiting.
Cary sputtered out, “We’ll trust the science, Mrs. Gadby. We always trust the science.”
Shiloh’s eyes got wide. The other people onstage kept going with their dialogue. And Cary realized he’d just said a line from thenextscene. He’d skipped over a ton of exposition and a few major clues—and the other actors onstage had followed him right off the cliff.
They were deep into the wrong scene now. Everyone was making big, scared eyes at each other, like they didn’t know what to do but keep going.
The scene eventually wound its way back to Shiloh.
She held up a finger. “Just one moment, Inspector...”
Shiloh brought them back to where they’d left off, but somehow accommodated everything else that had just happened in the scene.
She was completely improvising, and inviting Cary to improvise with her.
He locked his eyes on hers. He spoke in a Scottish accent. Between the two of them, they hit every point that they’d missed, and she made sure he still got to deliver his big joke: “Good lord, woman—not the perambulator!”
Cary just looked in Shiloh’s eyes and followed her. And everyone else onstage followed her, too.
Shiloh didn’t leave the stage for the next scene, so there was no time to strategize. They all just walked out there and let her steer them past the repetition until they were back on track.
The audience didn’t notice.
Cary felt so mortified by his mistake. So ashamed of himself.
He thought he’d spoiled the whole show.
But Shiloh caught him. She held him. She carried him out of it.
After it was over, the actors who might have been angry with Cary were all too impressed with themselves to point fingers.
Nineteen
before
“We should have sex,” Shiloh said. She was lying in his arms, on the bed in her dorm room. They’d been kissing for hours. They’d been kissing all day. They’d been kissing like they’d both realized that they should have been kissing all along.
Cary was feeling a little drunk from it. “What?”
“We should have sex. I’ve never done it.”
