The audience was still collectively holding his breath, Mercutio looked like he’d seen a ghost, and Juliet was peeking around the backdrop she was waiting behind, staring at me wide-eyed.
Well.
The show had to go on.
“Is this a rodent I see before me?” I projected, gesturing at the squirrel.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ward standing, and while there was some stiff competition for times I’d been happiest to see him, this one easily made the top ten.
“Forsooth… it…”don’t swear. “Is a sign! Of…”of what Ryder?“Of…”
“Climate change,” Seth whispered from his position in front of the stage, acting as the world’s worst prompter.
“Climate… change?” I repeated.
Seth shrugged.
The squirrel looked at me the way I thought squirrels probably looked at acorns right before they sank their sharp little squirrel teeth into them.
Ward had made it to the edge of the stage by now, waving me over. I moved as carefully as I would have if I was holding a crate of dynamite, edging my way over until Ward hopped up onto the stage with me and reached out to the squirrel.
“Hey little guy,” he murmured.
“Who’re you calling little?” I asked, relieved as he gently encouraged tiny claws out of thin spandex.
I could hardly believe he was up on stage like this—he’d refused to even come out for the curtain call the couple of times I’d convinced him to help out with school productions. But then, he was up here to help me.
He didn’t seem to have any problem doing that, no matter how hard it was.
“I, uh… entrust this diminutive omen to the gentle hands of… Ward... Warden, of umm. The forest,” I said as Ward finally got the squirrel—which seemed pretty happy to go with him—free. “Be well, my small friend. Your input was much appreciated.”
The audience laughed at that, at least.
The rest of the performance went off without a hitch, and as I was lying on center stage pretending—convincingly, I thought—to be dead, the audience stood up and cheered.
That was the thing about live audiences that you just didn’t get in the movies. There was something about playing to other people, taking in the atmosphere, reacting to the mood in the room. Or in the park. Whatever.
It reminded me of what I loved about acting, what I’d always loved. The butterflies on opening night and the relief at final curtain, when everyone clapped and all the mistakes and missteps were forgotten instead of being replayed again and again in end-of-day reels.
As I held hands with the rest of the cast while we took the traditional bows, my face started to hurt from smiling.
It’d been a long time since that happened, too.
Ward was still right there—minus the squirrel, which he’d obviously released back into the wild—beaming at me, clapping the loudest, and evencheering. Maybe I still had it, after all.
Seth tackled me into a hug as soon as the lights went down and the rest of the cast left the stage, squeezing me so tight I was in danger of passing out and bouncing up and down.
“I’m so getting an Otter for this one,” he said.
“An Otter?” I asked.
Like, an actual… otter?
Although, considering this was Seth, not the weirdest pet I could imagine him keeping.
“Otter Bay’s equivalent to an Oscar,” he said. “They give them out before the community theatre program goes on its end-of-year break. I missed out last year but I have a good feeling about this one.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing community theatre after all this time,” I said.
