comical British cacophony of ridiculous dialogue. On the other side of the stage, a Korean stagehand named Simon nearly stepped off the edge as he tried to maneuver a large, framed painting around the professors’ grand table. Meagan jumped into action, screaming his name as she rushed over to catch him if he were to fall.
The noise and confusion were increasing exponentially, and as I found out too late, so was the frustration of the amateur carpenter onstage. He managed to control himself right up until the moment when Simon, who was still trying to position the frame, rammed the end of it into the wardrobe door. Kate screamed in mock horror at the gouge in the wood, which attracted the attention of the rest of the students in the room. The apes in the balcony started yelling down at Simon, giving him a hard time, and Simon started yelling back that actors were an ungrateful bunch of egotists. It was all in good fun, of course, and I was chuckling in the front row when Scott stopped what he was doing and rounded on the students with so much impatience that it scared me.
“Hey! Would you all mind keeping it down?” he yelled, hands on hips and anger like shrapnel in his voice. “Kenny can’t hear a word I’m saying and he’s only two feet away! Just . . . chill out!”
And he turned back to work with a stiffness I’d never seen in him before, ordering Kenny to put more pressure on the base of the wardrobe structure.
Standing in the middle of the stage in her favorite purple corduroys and matching flowered shirt, Shayla was dumbstruck. Her bottom lip came out, her chin started to tremble, and she looked at me as if willing me to leap onto the stage and whisk her away from the man she’d never heard yell before. I felt the same way she did.
Behind her, Scott had stopped working and was kneeling there, hammer in hand, doing nothing. Kenny still held his half of the wardrobe and seemed rather unfazed by what had just happened. Then again, he’d probably witnessed similar displays on the basketball court. So when he saw Shayla’s face, he let go of the wardrobe without hesitation and went to her before I’d had time to rise from my chair.
“Hey, Lady Shay,” he said, crouching down beside her, “whatsa matter?”
She didn’t say anything. She just turned her head toward Scott as her chin started to quiver in earnest.
“What—him?” Kenny said in a nonchalant voice, pointing over his shoulder. “He’s just ticked off ’cause he can’t get his wardrobe to work.”
“He yelled at me,” Shayla said in such an unsteady voice that someone at the back of the room giggled. That seemed to release the tension enough that others started to talk. The crisis had passed. But not onstage. Scott straightened and walked over to where Shayla stood. She watched him come with a frown so thunderous that it would have been comical under different circumstances. Kenny squeezed her arm and moved aside.
Scott took a moment to look down at her, considering the expression on her face and probably assessing the risk. Then he sat down cross-legged in front of her, looked directly and sincerely into her eyes, and said, “I messed up, didn’t I?”
She took a shaky breath and said, “You yelled at me.”
“You’re right, Lady Shay. I shouldn’t have.”
“You sca-yod me.” She gave a little hiccup and swallowed hard.
“I didn’t mean to scare you—”
“You should say sowwy.”
Scott raked his fingers through his hair. “I am sorry, Shay. I wasn’t mad at you. I promise I wasn’t. But I was mad at that wardrobe because I can’t get it to work right.” He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
She seemed to consider that for a moment, then propped her fists on her little hips and said, “Don’t do it again.”
Scott smiled, though I could still see tension in the lines of his face. “I’ll try not to.” He tweaked her nose. “Forgive me?”
She hesitated, playing a little hard to get as all good girls do, but then she nodded and Scott scooped her up and sat her down in the crook of his crossed legs. She leaned back against him while he whispered something in her ear that made her giggle. They sat like that for a while, and I looked on from the first row of the audience, blinking hard.
I’d learned three things