Leo: Stage Fright Read online

  Lydia borrowed her mother's car and drove to the theatre. She kept her thoughts positive.

  Eric and I will stop this madness. Together we'll find a way to keep Jill from being hurt and put an end to all of this.

  It was a glaringly sunny Dallas afternoon, very warm for spring, when Lydia opened the stage door and stepped into the pitch-black theatre.

  Lydia took a moment so her eyes could adjust to the lack of light. The last thing she wanted was to knock something over and be thrown out of the theatre.

  She silently wove her way between set pieces stored from previous DYT productions, heading for the corner where she was to meet Eric.

  He hadn't arrived yet. She turned her watch in the direction of the light coming from the stage. 3.13, and counting. Lydia stepped back into the darkness and listened to the auditions taking place on stage.

  She recognized Keenan's voice. He was reading for the role of Che and, by the sound of it, doing very well. Lydia heard Bill Glover give Keenan some directions and ask him to read a second time. Keenan's second reading was even better than his first. He was a cinch for the male lead.

  Lydia leaned into the light to look at her watch. 3.20. Eric was late. Where is he?

  Maybe she hadn't heard him correctly. Maybe he'd meant the right corner towards the front. She started to tiptoe in that direction, but stopped short. Jill.

  The pretty blonde stood in the opposite wings, watching Keenan perform. She was smiling, completely enraptured. Lydia smiled ruefully. She understood how Jill felt. After all, that's how she had been only last summer.

  Lydia checked her watch again. Another five minutes had passed. Could something have happened to Eric?

  Her foot bumped a piece of scenery. Her first urge was to retreat to the darkest corner. But, just as she was about to take a step, she saw something move in the darkness behind Jill.

  Someone was fiddling with the ropes that lowered and raised the sets.

  It's just one of Garrett's backstage crew, Lydia concluded. No. This was a blonde girl. With a very familiar haircut. Page!

  From across the stage, Lydia saw the rope Page was loosening. The rope stretched to the grid on the ceiling, where it was attached to a sandbag. The sandbag hung directly above Jill's head!

  Lydia's heart thumped wildly in her chest. I can't wait for Eric. I just can't wait! Lydia bolted out of the wings on to the stage. She didn't stop to explain to Keenan or Bill. There wasn't time.

  "What are you trying—?" Keenan shouted, perplexed.

  "Lydia, please, you have no business being here!" Bill shouted.

  "Hey, get off the stage!" Garrett screamed.

  Lydia ducked her head low, ran past Jill and hurled herself at Page. They hit the ground with Lydia on top. But Page was stronger than Lydia imagined. In a heartbeat, they'd flipped over and Lydia found herself staring up at the sandbag Page had planned to drop on Jill. It swung wildly back and forth.

  Jill screamed as she watched Lydia and Page claw and scratch at each other. Page grabbed Lydia by the hair and slammed her head hard against the wooden floor.

  Lydia saw stars and, for a moment, thought she might pass out. With every ounce of strength she could muster, she heaved Page off of her.

  "Call the police," Lydia rasped, scrambling to her feet. Jill stood paralyzed with fear.

  Page found a long-handled wrench and swung it wildly at Lydia. "Get out," she growled. "Get out of my way."

  Lydia caught the end of the wrench and the girls collided into the metal stand where the ropes for the counterweight system were tied off.

  Page looked up, wild-eyed, and suddenly shoved Lydia into Jill. The girl tumbled backwards as Lydia fell to the ground, right on the spot where Jill had been standing.

  Badly shaken, her breath knocked from her, Lydia looked up to see the sandbag hurtling towards her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If you get to the end of the rainbow and find only a pot of beans – remember to take them home and plant them. What looks like a disappointment today will actually be a bonus of some sort. It may be money (Venus in nice aspect to Jupiter) or it may be just a lovely compliment from a friend.

  For three weeks there was no light or dreams, only voices. Faint voices that crept into Lydia's injured brain; sometimes they were Page's mocking cries of victory, other times they were her mother's worried moans; most often they were Lydia's own voice asking, "Why...why?"

  She had no idea if she were alive or dead. Is this death, she wondered during one of her few moments of clarity, the mind going its eternal way while the body was no more ?

  Unable to open her eyes, being fed by a tube in her arm, Lydia slept and slept, like the princess in the old stories waiting to be awakened by a prince's kiss.

  "Lydia... Lydia..." The voice belonged to a boy, but in her fog Lydia could not tell exactly who.

  "Lydia, please."

  She sensed that he had been talking to her for awhile, his gentle voice trying to float her to the surface.

  "Lydia, please wake up," the voice continued. "I can't stand seeing you so still."

  Lydia's closed eyelids fluttered slightly. Come on! Her mind was starting to clear. You can do it!

  "Atta girl!" the voice encouraged. "Lydia, you're a Leo, you're a fighter – now prove it! Prove it to everyone who ever doubted you!"

  Lydia's mind was moving through thick layers of mental clouds.

  She felt something – someone – take her hand and squeeze it gently. It was the first physical sensation she remembered feeling since the moment when everything went black.

  Lydia cautiously let her eyelids separate, and then tried to focus. She wanted to force the most basic question from her throat – "Where am I?" – but she could not produce a single word.

  A moment or two later, her eyes adjusted to the low light in the room, and she could finally see the boy sitting by her bed. Eric!

  "You're awake," he said hoarsely. "Lydia, you woke up!"

  Lydia couldn't talk yet. She had to content herself with looking round. She definitely wasn't home, she was in a hospital. From the looks of all the fancy machines and monitors surrounding her bed, something had gone terribly wrong.

  "What... what happened?" she managed to whisper. The words felt too thick for her throat, and she was suddenly aware of the terribly sour taste in her mouth.

  "Don't try and talk," he told her.

  But she had to know. "Eric, tell me," Lydia said in a haltingly slow voice, as if she were speaking a foreign language for the first time.

  "I can't believe you're finally awake!" His voice was excited, like a kid at a birthday party. "I'd better go and tell the nurse!"

  "Wait," she told him, "not yet." The words were still coming with difficulty, as if she had to remember how to form them. "Eric, how... how long?"

  "By my count, you've been lost to the world for a lifetime." He smiled and added, "But by the calendar, almost three weeks."

  "Three weeks?" Lydia said, trying to make sense of his answer. "Three weeks?"

  She closed her eyes again, wanting to return to the safety of sleep.

  Eric shook her gently, saying, "Lydia, don't go away! Come on, stay awake!"

  Three weeks. Is that possible?

  "Mrs. Bernard? Nurse?" Eric was at the door. "She's awake. Come quick!"

  Lydia struggled to sit up and was instantly hit with the worst headache she could imagine. Instinctively she raised a hand to her head – and, to her shock, found it wrapped with heavy bandages.

  She was filled with instant panic. "Eric? What is this?"

  "You don't remember?"

  "No."

  "You don't remember anything?" he asked.

  Lydia waited for the intense pain in her head to subside. She'd never felt anything so punishing in her life.

  Speaking very slowly, she said, "I remember the theatre. Someone screaming," she said, forcing the images to the surface. "And... that's
all. Please tell me what happened."

  Eric waved to the nurse in the hall and turned to Lydia, "The nurse is coming. And she looks very happy. But not as happy as I feel."

  "Please." Lydia's throat was parched. "Tell me what happened."

  "You were hit on the head by a sandbag from the theatre's counterweight system. It nearly crushed your skull." He shook his head. "You're lucky to be alive. And it's a miracle that you can still move your arms and legs."

  "Well, welcome back, stranger!" A woman in a white uniform smiled from the doorway. She checked the monitors above Lydia's bed and pulled a penlight out of her pocket. "Do you know where you are?"

  "I'm in a hospital. I don't know which one," Lydia replied. The nurse aimed the light first at one eye and then the other, checking her pupils.

  "You had a pretty nasty bump on the head," the nurse said, checking her pulse. "How do you feel?"

  "I'm not sure," Lydia replied, in barely a whisper. "I know I have a very bad headache and my mouth feels dryer than the Sahara desert."

  "I think we can do something about both of those problems." The nurse, whose nametag said Kathryn Bernard, made a notation on her clipboard. "I'm going to call your doctor. He'll need to do a neurological exam. While I call, I'll bet Eric here would be more than happy to pour you a glass of water."

  "My pleasure." Eric poured Lydia a drink from the pitcher of water that sat on her bedside table. He gently held the glass to her lips.

  "Don't try to drink it at first," cautioned the nurse from the doorway. "Just moisten your lips a bit. We don't want to rush things. I'll be back in a second."

  The liquid felt amazingly wonderful on her tongue, the best thing Lydia had ever tasted. "Thank you," she sighed. "Now tell me what happened at the theatre. Please."

  "Well, there was a lot of confusion, understandably," he said. "But someone – I think it was Garrett – called 911. They rushed you to the emergency room, and then into surgery."

  Lydia raised one hand to touch her bandages. "I must look terrible."

  "Not to me." Eric perched on the side of her bed smiling at her. "In fact, I'd have to say that you look truly wonderful."

  Lydia's head throbbed again and she winced. "Am I going to be OK?"

  "Of course." Eric caressed her cheek. "Besides, it'd take more than a couple of pounds of sand to get rid of you."

  This caused her to smile for the first time since that horrible day. As her mind cleared she began to vaguely remember the events leading up to her injury.

  "I was waiting backstage," she said, forcing her mind to concentrate. "Waiting for you."

  "I know," he said, embarrassed.

  "Where were you?"

  "You may not remember, but that afternoon I told you on the phone that Page hesitated for a second before she accepted my offer to give her a ride to the theatre. Well, I must have said something that gave me away. The upshot is that Page told me to meet her in the school parking lot. When I pulled in, every tyre on my van went flat. I stepped out to find that the entrance had been covered with small steel tacks." He shook his head, still angry at himself. "By the time I got to the theatre they were taking you away in an ambulance."

  Lydia closed her eyes. "I saw Page trying to hurt Jill and tried to stop her. Did they arrest Page?"

  Eric's face darkened. "Here's the really bad news. Jill thought you were trying to hurt her. So did Keenan and, I'm afraid, A.J., and even Robin."

  "You're joking?" Lydia said, alarmed.

  "I wish I was," he said. "Garrett insisted they had it wrong, that you were the intended victim all along—"

  "Garrett?" Lydia shook her head.

  Eric nodded. "He's actually come by to visit a number of times. He said he knew someone was out to get you since the closing night party for My One and Only."

  "He tried to warn me," Lydia said. "Only I wouldn't take him seriously."

  "Neither did anyone else." Eric ran one hand through his hair. "The long and the short of it is, everyone thinks Page was the hero who stopped you."

  "This is a bad dream," Lydia moaned.

  "Jill saw you dash across the stage and charge into Page. But it was dark in the wings, and Jill couldn't swear what happened next, or why. She saw you and Page struggling, and the sandbag was falling."

  Lydia put her hand to her temple and rubbed it in a small circle. "So now Page is telling everyone I tried to kill her?"

  Eric shook his head. "Page isn't telling anyone anything. She disappeared the next day."

  "Disappeared?" Lydia repeated.

  "Without a trace." Eric stood up and paced round the tiny hospital room. "It makes me so mad. I tried to get the police to find her. But they weren't interested, so I looked into it myself." Eric returned to Lydia's bedside. "I can't prove it, but I think Page was here in Dallas on her own."

  "But what about her parents?" Lydia asked, taking another sip of water from the glass next to her bed.

  "I found no trace of any parents. In fact I couldn't even find out where she'd been living, until I traced her phone number to a dumpy motel. Pretty creepy."

  "Did you tell the police?" Lydia asked.

  "Absolutely," he said. "They put the information in some file, but said there 'wasn't enough evidence to warrant an investigation'. She'd have to be reported as a missing person by an adult."

  "I suppose everyone thinks I scared Page away," Lydia said miserably.

  Eric waved one hand in the air. "Who cares what they think. The only thing that matters is that I know the truth and your parents believe me."

  "Parents?" Lydia asked.

  "They, and Jake, have been here by your bedside every day since you got hurt. We all have."

  "Mom and Dad – together?" This was almost as big a shock as her injury.

  "Nice people. I've really got to know them both. And Jake's a totally cool kid."

  "Yeah. He is." Lydia's eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. "I wish I'd spent more time with him."

  Eric squeezed her hand. "Hey, you've been spending morning, noon and night with him. You just didn't know it."

  Lydia chuckled. There was so much to absorb. She felt like she'd been out of touch for three years, not three weeks.

  "What about Evita?" she asked as the doctor and nurses gathered in the hall outside her room. "Did it open?"

  "No, DYT temporarily postponed the show because of technical problems at the theatre," Eric told her. "At least, that's the official version."

  Lydia leaned back against her pillows, feeling like a changed person. "I guess it's my own fault that people were so quick to think I was the bad one."

  "Don't be so hard on yourself," Eric protested. "Remember, Page was no slouch in getting people to believe—"

  Lydia stopped him. "I didn't treat my friends very well. I always thought I should be the centre of attention, and assumed that everyone agreed with me."

  "What do you think now?" he asked.

  She smiled wanly. "For starters, I think that my career at the Dallas Youth Theatre is washed up."

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  "About DYT? Nothing," she said. "About my life – go on. Try to be kind to my friends and family. Maybe enjoy the world, what's left of this spring and the summer, instead of spending it cooped up in a dusty, dark theatre."

  "Enjoy the world...with me?" Eric asked with his boyish charm.

  "Maybe," she replied with a flirtatious grin, the old spark back in her eyes. "And next year...I'm going to go to Juilliard, or the best theatre school I can find!"

  "That's the girl I love," Eric said softly.

  His words caught them both by surprise.

  "Yes, love," he repeated. "Oh, sure, being a Leo, you can be unbearably ambitious, egocentric, boastful, insatiable in your need to be worshipped and adored, bored by puny details, reckless—"

  "Oh, please," she interrupted. "Don't try to make me feel better!"

  He smiled. "Y
ou're also trustworthy, responsible, a hard worker, talented, loving, adventuresome, and brave. And—" He raised a finger. "Being a Leo, you're lucky to have strong recuperative powers. So I bet you'll fool all the doctors and be back on your feet in no time!"

  "You really think so?" she asked.

  He replied by brushing her cheek with a wonderful, prince-like kiss. "I know so."

  EPILOGUE

  The sun moves into your opposite sign, Aquarius, and you are feeling very expansive towards your friends. Be nice to them on your way up – they will soften your landing if you fall.

  It was the final week in August, one week before Lydia was to leave for New York and drama school. It had been both an awful and wonderful summer.

  Awful, because Lydia's therapy to recover from her injury had been slow and often painful. It had only been in the past week or two, after endless hours of stretching, weight training, swimming, and deep massages, that she'd been able to move without any physical reminders of her injury.

  Awful, because A.J., Robin, and the Caught In The Act kids had ignored her totally.

  Wonderful, because she had enjoyed planting and tending a garden with her mother and biking with Jake. Wonderful, because her parents had really rallied round her recovery. Oh, there was no chance that they'd ever get back together, but at least there was some warmth between them for the first time since the divorce.

  Wonderful, because her hair had begun to grow back.

  Wonderful, because she and Eric had become so close. He'd helped her with her physiotherapy, pacing alongside her in the pool, taking long walks with her, keeping her spirits high.