of him with lipstick. “My mom does that.”
“This is not your mama’s lipstick.” Lola needed to hurry. She had principal players in line waiting for makeup. She’d gone a little overboard with Caden. “This is the black I reserve for evil characters. I’ve never used this on a mom. Not ever.” At least no one who played a mom on stage.
“I want some.” Becky popped up at the table, wearing a disheveled toga over a pair of blue jeans and red cowboy boots. She carried the clanking sword. “I want to look like Caden.”
There was a chorus of “Me too.”
“Girls can’t have this.” Caden scowled, looking like the evil satyr he was going to be playing. “This is for bad guys only.” He jutted his chin toward Lola and commanded, “Do it.”
When Lola finished with his lips, Caden snarled at his friends and ran to Drew for a picture.
Several moms had drifted Lola’s way. Not close enough to engage Lola in conversation but close enough to see what she was doing.
Amid a cacophony of “Me nexts,” Becky claimed Lola’s client chair. “It’s me. I’m Athena.” She’d pulled the bottom half of the toga through a corded belt. It hung in double folds around her waist. She dropped her sword. It clattered and clanked and stopped several conversations before it quieted.
Lola made quick work of Becky’s hair, threading it with plastic pearls. And then she lined her eyes with gold eye shadow.
After the ten main players had their makeup on, Lola couldn’t turn down the requests from the chorus and the army, at least not when Wendy gave her approval.
Moms drifted closer. They smiled at their children and Lola, who felt something she hadn’t in a long time—that she belonged somewhere besides the retirement home and the mortuary. She could have a place here, if only she twisted hair and applied makeup fast enough.
Eventually, she ran out of time. Wendy called the cast for a run-through of their lines. Parents and children moved to the stage but not without thank-yous for Lola and a couple of exuberant hugs from the acting troupe.
Lola collapsed onto her chair, feeling as drained as if she’d been called in at the last minute to work a wedding party with twelve bridesmaids.
“That was cool.” Drew handed her a bottle of water. “Not at all what I expected when Wendy said you’d be doing makeup.”
“I don’t like to be limited to tradition.”
“Clearly.” His gaze drifted to the blue suede jacket hanging behind her and then toward Wendy standing on the side of the stage with her boring hair and her forgettable wardrobe.
Lola sighed, stopped staring at Drew, and turned her attention to the stage to enjoy rehearsal.
The kids in the chorus and the army were adorable. They sang, twirled their capes, and as time dragged on, yawned. Not surprisingly, Becky was a ham. She and Caden stole the show. Good casting on Wendy’s part.
Lola could have left at any time but didn’t. This was her troupe, her tribe. She knew the texture of Soldier Number Four’s hair and who had dimples in the chorus. She knew that Laura, who played an owl, had recently battled chicken pox, and that Eric, Soldier Number Nine, had a new puppy.
When rehearsal was over, Lola packed up her supplies. “Becky is a pistol. Her high school years are going to be fun for you.”
Drew bristled like a commuter who’d been told the train was too full. “Becky’s not like you.”
“Like me?” Lola did a double take. “I was shy in school. I sat at the back of the class and never said anything without a teacher prying it out of me. I never would’ve tried out for a school play.” She’d rejected the offer to be a tree one year in favor of working backstage. “Becky is nothing like me, and I think she’s wonderful.”
“Wonderful…” Drew’s protests died out, and his guard slipped. There was longing in his dark-brown eyes, a yearning that called to Lola. “She’s just…She’s not a pistol, okay?” His guard came back up.
“No,” Lola agreed, because he seemed to need her to. “Becky’s not a pistol.” And he thought Lola was. Heart heavy, she turned away.
Wendy hurried down the stage stairs, Pied Piper to a string of children. She gushed her thanks to Lola. “You injected the production with a level of excitement the kids needed.”
The unadorned, pink-cheeked faces of children who hadn’t received makeup clustered around Wendy and Lola.
A little redheaded girl twirled her hair around