Chapter 6

6

S edgwick Cove was famous for a couple of things. The first, obviously, was for being Maine’s version of Salem, Massachusetts —a sort of mecca for witchcraft history and modern-day witchy vibes. The second was the Sedgwick Cove Playhouse.

The playhouse was set on a rocky outcropping overlooking the sea. From the outside, tourists could see miles of scenic coastline, sandy beaches, and several lighthouses. And once inside, they could see some of the best regional theater outside of the major East coast metropolises. For decades, the Sedgwick Cove Playhouse had been the home of The Wandering Mistrals, a theater company known for lush, elaborate musical productions, stunning sets, and headliner talent. All of this was thanks to Vincent Meyers, a flashy Broadway producer who had grown up whiling away his boyhood summers on the beaches of Maine. After falling in love with and marrying a woman from Sedgwick Cove, he decided to buy the land in the 1960s and turn it into a theatrical vacation destination. His connections, talent, and of course, piles of money, meant that he usually got what he wanted. The playhouse had been a tourist attraction ever since, and was still owned by the same family.

I’d known about the Sedgwick Cove Playhouse for a long time. Being a local theater kid, I would have known about it anyway. It had a national reputation, and was way up on my best friend Poe’s shortlist of summer stock theaters she hoped to audition for when she was in college. I stopped to snap a quick selfie in front of the place and texted it to Poe, because I knew she’d kill me if I didn’t. She responded in about five seconds.

OMGGGGGGGGG I’M SO JEALOUS! Are you seeing a show?!

No, just a meeting for a town festival thing.

Let’s see one when I come visit you! They’re doing Sweeney Todd this summer, and you know my Sondheim obsession!

Sounds good, I replied. Truthfully, I had mixed feelings as I stared up at the building in front of me. I’d never seen a play there, never even set foot in the place, as far as I knew. But what I did know was that my mother had a very complicated history with the place, for one very specific reason: my father.

My father had never been in my life, and for the most part, I didn’t feel the absence of him. After all, it’s hard to miss something you’ve never had. I had gotten curious growing up, naturally, but it took years of wheedling and coaxing before my mother would surrender enough details to piece together the story. My father had been a professional actor, a company member of the Wandering Mistrals the summer before I was born. He was older than my mother by a few years, and apparently he was very dashing, very talented, and very married. Not that my mother had known this last bit until afterward. He decided to keep that little tidbit to himself as he swept her off her feet in a swoon-worthy summer romance. My mom had been working her way through nursing school at the time, and had picked up a part-time gig in the box office; and there he was, with a dazzling toothpaste commercial smile, and a seemingly endless supply of charm.

“And there I was, young and stupid and desperately in love with him from the first time he spoke to me,” my mom had said one night, after she had allowed herself a second glass of wine.

“So it was love at first sight?” I had asked in the way only a naive ten-year-old could.

My mom had smiled at me sadly. “I thought so. But infatuation and love are two different things, and I learned that the hard way.”

After a two-month fling, my mother had a suitcase packed for New York City. She was sure he would ask her to come back with him when his contract was up, and she wanted to be ready. Instead, he had rumpled her hair like a precocious kid, and laughed off the idea.

“Oh, kid, that’s sweet, it really is. I’m flattered,” he’d said, like she’d asked for his autograph at the stage door, “but we were just having a bit of fun, weren’t we?”

“A bit of fun,” my mom repeated in a hollow voice. I hated that voice. I hated it so much that I never asked her about him again.

But I had tried to stalk him on the internet. The only place I could find any trace of him was on IMDB, where it listed him in a few small television parts, mostly on soap operas. Then he just… vanished. Nothing listed after 2008, which also happened to be the year I was born. It was an odd coincidence, and made him feel like even more of a mystery. I would sometimes watch commercials and tv shows searching for his face—the face I had memorized in the one headshot I could find of him online. I never saw him anywhere.

Now, as I stood in front of the playhouse, I felt a strange pit in my stomach. How odd that a place I’d never been could hold so much significance in my life. I’d felt that way about the entire town of Sedgwick Cove only a short time ago, but that sensation had been swiftly followed by one of belonging—of rightness. I belonged to Lightkeep Cottage, to that sweeping beach, to the crashing waves and the brine-scented air. But this place, I thought, as I looked up at the front doors… I didn’t feel a special connection here.

One of the doors had been propped open with a folding chair, and I slipped quietly into the front lobby. Instantly, I felt my body relax. Okay, I may not have felt drawn to this building, but it was still a theater, after all, and all theaters, from Broadway stages to tiny church halls, are the same at heart. They smell the same: sawdust and paint and hairspray and racks of recycled costumes. The wings are always crammed with the same things: dinged up rehearsal furniture, and boxes of random props and a jungle of ropes, and pulleys and wiring dotted with half-empty coffee cups. I took a deep breath, and felt my body relax. I tried to savor the feeling, because I knew, once I walked through the doors from the lobby to the main theater, I’d be on the defensive again. I might know in my bones that I belong in Sedgwick Cove, but I still had to convince the rest of the teenage population.

“Can I help you?”

The bored voice seemed to come from nowhere, and I let out a humiliating squeak of surprise. I spun around, and noticed for the first time that there was someone sitting in the box office booth. He didn’t even look up from his phone as I approached.

“Uh, yeah, I’m here for the meeting?” I said, turning the statement into a question.

The boy looked up and smirked at me. “You sure about that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, the word coming out with a snap in it like a mousetrap, partly because I was annoyed at my own lack of confidence, and partly because I was taken aback by his appearance. The boy was lanky and tall, looking like he’d folded himself into the tiny space with difficulty. His features were very angular—protruding cheekbones, a square chin, and a long, slightly crooked nose. Even his mouth, when he smiled, made a sharp slash in his face. But it was his eyes that truly caught my attention, because one of them was the greenish blue of the ocean, and the other was a startling shade of golden brown. I realized that I’d been staring at him for several silent seconds, and I felt my cheeks flood with color as I dropped my gaze to my feet. “Yes,” I repeated in a sheepish voice.

“You just need to sign in,” the boy said, gesturing toward a clipboard with his elbow, and returning his own gaze to the phone in his hands.

“Right. No problem,” I muttered, scrawling my name with the attached pen.

“Straight through those doors,” the boy said when I had put the pen down. I mumbled my thanks, and walked straight through the swinging double doors.

The theater was a traditional proscenium space, with a thrust stage on one end and rows of audience seating with those red velvet seats that snap up aggressively when you aren’t sitting in them. About two dozen teenagers were spread out in the first few rows, legs dangling over arms of seats, and phones in hands. Zale MacDowell stood up on the stage beside a large writing pad on an easel and three huge Tupperware bins. His face was flushed with excitement, and he kept rubbing his hands together, like an overconfident movie villain. He caught sight of me walking up the aisle, and his face split into a grin.

“Wren! Eva told me you were coming!”

I wished he hadn’t said my name out loud. Every head in the room turned, every pair of eyes latched onto me, so I felt like an actor in a blinding spotlight making a dramatic and unexpected entrance from the back of the house. I did my best not to cringe as a hurried the rest of the way up the aisle, and met Zale at the lip of the stage.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, though it couldn’t have been a minute or two past seven. “Did I miss anything?”

“No, we’re just about to start. Have a seat!”

I turned and saw Eva waving at me. I sank into the seat next to her, still feeling the weight of everyone’s gazes. Behind me, a volley of whispering had started up among the other kids.

“Great idea, asking me here. I feel very included and not at all like a carnival sideshow attraction,” I said with a big fake smile.

Eva chuckled. “Like I told you earlier, you can either hide away and let the rumors tell the story, or you can show up and help out and let everyone see how boring and normal you are.”

“Could we just do a quick demonstration of magical skill and get it over with?” I murmured, thinking about the scones at home. Rhi had tried to salvage them with frosting and placed them on a plate, as though anyone would be tempted by the culinary equivalent of vanilla coated hockey pucks. I glanced around me, and realized I didn’t see Nova among the other kids. “Hey, where’s Nova?” I asked.

Eva shrugged, and her brows pulled together. “I don’t know. I thought she might come, but then she didn’t respond when I offered to pick her up.”

I frowned. She’d sounded like there was something important she’d wanted to tell me. So why hadn’t she bothered to show up? But there was no time to dwell on it as Zale started calling for everyone’s attention, flapping his hands like he might take off. When everyone stopped muttering and turned to face him, he smiled again, taking a deep breath.

“Hello everyone! Thanks for coming. When I got voted chair of the Litha pageant committee, I promised that I would make this the best midsummer celebration yet, and I intend to keep that promise!”

“Just for the record, no one voted for you. You won by default, because no one else wanted to do it,” called the broad- shouldered guy sitting in the row behind me. I thought his name might have been Sergei, but I couldn’t swear to it.

Zale’s smile froze on his face, but only for a moment. “Thank you for that clarification, Sergei. Regardless of how I wound up at the helm of this project, it is still going to be the greatest pageant this town has ever seen!” He thrust his fist into the air, as though expecting everyone to shout “HUZZAH!” His exuberant gesture was met with silence.

Someone cleared their throat. Zale sighed and lowered his fist.

“Okay, fine, moving on. To start, I thought that we could?—”

The door at the back of the theater swung open and the boy from the box office strolled down the aisle, munching on an apple. He gave a casual sort of wave to Zale, and slid into a seat toward the back of the theater.

“Oh, hey, Luca. Thanks for unlocking the place for us.”

“No sweat,” the boy called Luca replied. “It’s 7:15, so I locked the doors again like you asked.”

Eva turned to Zale. “You had him lock the doors? Why?”

Zale rolled his eyes and huffed. “Because obviously I don’t want to give away any of the details. I want the town to be surprised. I want them to be blown away!”

Eva opened her mouth to say something snarky, but I interrupted her by asking, “Who is that?”

“Him? Oh, that’s Luca Meyers.”

“Wait, Meyers? As in the Meyers who own this place?”

“That’s right. Hence the keys.”

“He wasn’t at the bonfire, was he?” I asked, hoping Eva would miss the subtext, which was that if he’d been at the bonfire, I definitely would have noticed him.

Based on Eva’s smirk, I failed with the whole subtext thing. “He doesn’t live here during the school year. They only come up for the summers.” She rolled her eyes, as though she couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous than someone coming to the beach for the summer.

I had about five hundred more questions about Luca, but I bit them back as someone in the group raised their hand.

“Yes, Petra?” Zale called, looking delighted at the engagement.

“Look, no offense, but what could we possibly give away that everyone in the town doesn’t already know?” Petra asked. “I mean, we’ve used the same script, the same costumes, the same props every single year since… forever.”

There was a round of mumbling and nodding. Apparently, Petra wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Zale was not daunted by the general pall of negativity. “I’m glad you brought that up, Petra! You’re absolutely right! I know our parents and grandparents insist it’s traditional, but let’s be honest, this pageant is tired. It needs a new twist. And that’s why we’re here. We’re not just assigning parts and handing out scripts tonight. We’re reinventing the pageant!” Zale turned and wrote the words, “Reinventing the Pageant” in big red letters on the easel pad. He embellished it with half a dozen exclamation points, and underlined it three times for good measure. He looked expectantly at the group, who stared blankly back.

“So… how are we reinventing it?” a girl asked.

Zale’s smile slipped. “Well, that’s… that’s what we’re gonna figure out. I need your ideas. Let’s start brainstorming!”

The answering silence spiraled. Everyone was looking at each other, waiting for someone—anyone—to speak up. Up on the stage, Zale was deflating like a sad balloon. I felt like a kid in class, watching the teacher practically beg for interaction. I’d always been the kid to take pity on the teacher and raise my hand, just to see the hope spring back into their eyes.

I was still that kid. My hand shot up.

“Yes! Thank you, Wren!” Zale sang, the relief palpable on his face.

“Uh…” I swallowed hard, not enjoying the sensation of all the eyes that had now turned to stare at me, and knowing most of them would probably roll when they heard what I had to say. “Sorry, I’m sure everyone else already knows everything about this pageant, but since this is my first summer here in a long time, could you… refresh my memory?” I tried to ignore the sniggering.

“She doesn’t even know the story of Litha?” someone muttered.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing about it either,” said another voice from behind me. I turned to see Luca propping his feet up, like he was getting ready for story time.

“Why would you care?” Sergei asked. He was looking at Luca with a decidedly ugly expression. I was taken aback to see him glare that way, but Luca simply shrugged with an easy smile.

“I don’t usually make it up for the summer until 4th of July weekend. I’ve never seen the pageant before,” he said.

But Zale didn’t seem to mind. His eyes lit up like they had that night at the bonfire, when he’d taken it upon himself to tell us all the Sedgwick Cove origin story, and I knew he loved any opportunity to geek out about this town.

“Why don’t I just give a quick recap for Wren and Luca, and everyone else, start getting your creative juices flowing!”

“Ew,” Petra muttered.

Zale cleared his throat theatrically, and the story began.