Page 38 of Every Star that Shines

A small part of him breathed a sigh of relief. He wandered back onto the workroom side of the curtain. When Noel saw him standing there, he mouthed, Ask her.

Caleb wanted to dismiss the suggestion. Delanie had rejected his offer to come to dinner at his parents’, after all. But that had been a little out of the blue, and he had put her on the spot. Would he have wanted the first evening they spent together in a decade to be dinner at her parents’? Not on my life. And she did just call me for advice about Amber. Like Noel said, I should at least give this a shot.

“Say, um, Delanie?” Caleb’s mouth felt like it was packed with sawdust. He moved back to the privacy of the right wing of the stage where he couldn’t see Noel’s furtive glances.

“Yeah?” Did she sound nervous? His heart was beating so fast, it was hard to tell.

“I was wondering, uh . . .”

“Yeah?” she prompted again.

He swallowed. “Did you want Emma to come early on Sunday too? She’s got her songs memorized, but it would probably help her to work through scene beats like the others.”

He punched his thigh at his own cowardice.

“Oh. Um, sure. That’s a great idea.” She sounded surprised. Or disappointed. “I had her scheduled for next week, but if she needs extra practise, we can start working with her now.”

“Alright. I’ll let Monica know.”

“Great. Thanks. I guess I’ll see you Sunday.”

“See you then.”

He ended the call and stood there with his hands on his hips, breathing deeply until his heart stopped racing.

When he went back to the workroom, Noel glanced up from his project.

“What did she say?”

“I never asked her,” Caleb mumbled, snatching the scrap wood from his workspace to clean it up so he didn’t have to meet his friend’s eye.

He could feel Noel studying him for a few moments before he said, “Speaking of shots, you know you miss every one of those you don’t take.”

“Thanks for the inspirational poster, man.”

“You know I got your back.”

Caleb rolled Geppetto’s workshop aside to make space for his next project, which was creating the prow of a little wooden boat on wheels. He had found some plans for a full-sized rowboat on the Internet and planned to use those as a guide for the prop.

If only relationships were as easy to figure out.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Delanie stood in front of the first row of theatre seats with one arm crossed in front of her and her other hand touching her lips, watching the teenagers on the stage above her go through their scene.

Celeste Leclerc, her red hair covered by a frilly white cap Becca had found in the costume cage, put her hands on her hips, her whole posture exaggerated as she glared at Grayson Elcano. The slender Filipino boy had brought a jester hat from home, and the bells hanging from the floppy ends of the cap tinkled every time he moved. Not quite a Punchinello hat, but a fun touch for rehearsal. Between and slightly behind them, Ethan White, the skinny tenth-grader with the precocious attitude who had been cast as Pinocchio, looked between them with an incredulous look on his face. Two other “puppets” stood toward the rear of the stage, watching the encounter.

“Are you saying,” Ethan said in a loud stage voice, “that you get to sing and tell jokes on the stage all day long, and Professor Rocco takes you anywhere you want?”

“Anywhere we want,” Grayson agreed in an approximation of a Cockney accent, his voice distorted to sound like a kazoo by the swazzle in his mouth. Finding one of the small reed instruments that gave Punch’s voice his signature sound on eBay had been quite a victory for Delanie.

“As long as it’s somewhere he wants,” said soft-spoken Celeste in an accent that leaned toward Cockney, though barely.

Grayson ignored her and rubbed his hands together in glee. “Ye should join us,” he said to Ethan. “It’s about time me ’ad someone new t’outsmart.”

“Now, Mr. Punch,” Celeste said, “ya know young Pinocchio here can’t stay. He’s got his papa to consider. And school.”

Ethan gave a broad wave of dismissal. “School, shmool. Papa won’t mind if I miss a little school to begin a career on the stage.”

---