Page 43 of Bring me Back

The authority fit him right. His voice was strong and deep to never be challenged. It was weird to hear him saying that he never imagined his life going this way.

“Tell me what you wanted to do instead.”

“A cowboy when I was six. A firefighter when I was eight. Your turn.”

I chuckled. “A ballerina. A biologist.”

“A biologist?”

I made a face. “It was a weird time when I started watching too many nature documentaries. I thought I could go around exploring the world.”

“That doesn’t sound bad. How did you end up with costumes?”

“My grandmother liked to sew, and I learned from her. I was good at it and I liked to have a project. I liked to be good at something.” I shrugged. I was young, and it was right at the time when kids started to make fun of me. Two years after mom died, I wasn’t the quiet kid mourning anymore. I was just plain weird, and they noticed. Sewing gave me a reason to be.

“You’re very good at it. You’re creative and passionate.”

I smiled. Sometimes people confused shyness with indifference. I liked how Daniel saw I was passionate in my own strange way.

“Ok, so little Hallie already knew how to sew. What’s next?”

And for the rest of the night, I told him. What I liked to do and what caught my attention. I made a list of movies with the best costumes for him to watch. He laughed at things I said and I let myself say things just to hear him laugh.

It was almost three o’clock in the morning when I fell asleep with the phone still in my ear, and my bed full of costumes.

“They are so nervous.”

Her voice was low and barely a murmur, but I heard it perfectly. We hid in the last row of seats, in the dark, so we wouldn’t interrupt the committee. The first man was talking to Helen, gesticulating to the stage, had a long ponytail and a goatee. The second, with unruly curly hair, scanned the theater with a frown like he couldn’t wait to be away from us. And the committee’s third member was a woman in her sixties with a huge amount of red hair.

“They will be fine. They know their lines.”

“Still,” she whispered back. “Sometimes you can mess it up from being so nervous.”

She had a point. The kids were jumpy before the committee arrived, even the ones who had natural swagger. I worried, especially because we put all our eggs in that one basket.

We watched in apprehensive silence as Helen showed them the front seats. I heard Hallie suck in a breath when the lights dimmed. Wait, silence and Adam opened the play as Theseus.

“I thought he was confident,” Hallie commented, when Adam’s voice wavered. “Being a jock and all.”

“Not all jocks are confident…” I argued.

She turned away from the stage to give me a look. “Not all jocks, huh? Were you one?”

I shrugged. Something told me she wasn’t a fan, and even though it was twenty years since my school days, I didn’t want her to think I was one of them. Whatevertheywere to her.

“You can tell me. I won’t judge.”

I flashed her a look, not believing it for one second. She giggled.

“Ok. But I’ll just judge a little.”

I opened a smile, getting bolder by the minute. I captured her fingers on mine. “Shhh, Cricket, I’m trying to listen to the play.”

After a while in silence, it was Hallie who talked again. “I finished getting the costumes ready. Separated by age and… theme.”

“Theme?” I glanced her way.

Hallie nodded, tucking her legs under her body, and turning completely toward me like it was the easiest thing in the world. The seat barely fit my body. Imagine if I tried to bring my legs up, but Hallie was a cute little thing.

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