"Is Nik coming to the show, then, tonight?"

The old stable still smelled mildly of horses, and the soft wind that was blowing up outside crept in through thick cracks in the siding, wafting the comforting odor around the actors. Since the production was staged at an outdoor theater in Rosaline's only park, the decrepit building was being used as a dressing room. Ray dabbed at her make up, exaggerating the line of her eyes and nose.

Her red hair was tucked up into a turban-like scarf, a huge kerchief covering her breast for once. She looked the picture of a nursemaid. An unaging, bouncy nursemaid. "Course!" She said. "He's paying for it, isn't he?"

Ray turned to me and straightened the shawl draped over my chest. I was dressed much more modestly than Juliet and the rest, a model of perfect virtue with tight wrist-length sleeves and a long, thickly layered skirt. "He said he's excited to see how you do tonight." She laughed to herself. "You do look like a nun, don't you?"

"Ray...I just..." I didn't know what to say, or if anything even needed to be said. Just that Nik bothered me. His brother, too. "Is Nik alright? You know, like, nice? Not involved in anything...weird, right? I mean you just met him..." I shook my head. "I'm sorry. Forget it."

"No, don't." Her mouth turned down a bit at the corner, like she had to think about how she felt before answering. "I know it's been really sudden and I just really like him. He hasn't told me what he does, or anything like that, but I don't know...he seems to travel a lot. You know he's actually the younger brother? Elijah is older than him."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. He says he wouldn't know what to do without him. He just seems so stuffy to me though, you know? Whatever, he seems to like you well enough." Her eyebrow raised suggestively, as it always did when any male happened to walk in my direction. Ray was ever hopeful for me.

I laughed. "Maybe if I suddenly aged ten years and wore designer clothing." I left out how the thought of anything going on between us was both mortifying in its impossibility and scintillating in that someone had thought of it happening.

Inadvertently, as I bent down to the smudged mirror at my station and arranged my hair over my shoulders, my brain sent me an image of the two of us; I saw him studying me, not with a look of curiosity, but fondness, while I gazed impertinently in his direction. Even in my mind, we couldn't happen.

Snapping out of my pessimistic reverie, I noticed the tuft of burgundy splayed across my friend's throat. "Rayanne?"

"Yes?" She started to apply a dark shade of lipstick, so her mouth would be visible from the stage when she said her lines.

I poked her playfully. "Costume only!" And pinched at the scarf Nik had told her came from Bulgaria. She snapped back, slapping away my hand. "Hey!"

"I know you don't like him, but the least you could do if keep your hands off my stuff." Her eyes narrowed with the condescending speech.

"Woah-alright. I didn't mean anything by it. Really." I waited for her to cool off a minute before speaking again. "I don't think you can wear it on stage though, seriously." The production team bristles if somebody wears an earring that isn't era-appropriate...

"Well too bad for them," she huffed, meaning the director and stage crew. She usually didn't get so defensive about things like this. Ray loved being dressed up in costumes.

Was she really that offended by my skepticism about Nik? I tried another tactic. "Really, though. Unless you have a major hickey, they'll untie it before you get on stage. Just take it off now so you don't lose it." She slamed the lip color onto the makeshift dressing table, and began to walk away into the swarm of half-ready performers.

"Whatever, I'm gonna be called soon."

I could see her swishing her skirt angrily and pushing past a startled Romeo and Tybalt. "Ray, you don't even go on for two more scenes!" She ignored me. "Great."


"I have seen the day
That I have worn a visor and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
Such as would please: 'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone..."

Capulet spoke a few more words and bade everyone dance, yelling at the servants to keep the fire down. Soon, Romeo and Juliet would cross paths and fall in love, all in one night. And I, Rosaline, sat alone off to the side, watching the ladies and gentlemen dance in steps it would be unseemly for a future novice to take.

As scripted, my countenance was pleasant, as if the only pleasure in life that I could ask for was to listen to the music of a party I could not join in. It wasn't unenjoyable to simply watch, though. I found myself lost in the romance of a whirlwind night in a hall two hundred years ago. There was Juliet, radiant as she was young, being seen by Romeo.

How simple it was: he met a girl. They danced. It was epic.

I watched along with the audience, rapt as Juliet was called away by her mother, and her nurse questioned by the lovestruck boy. She's a Capulet-there's no hope! Yet suddenly, we exit, and the two women are left alone...who is he? Juliet asks.

"...Romeo and a Montague; the only son of your great enemy."

"My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!.." Juliet laments, stricken by the revelation, but still too in love to stop now.

How funny, that Rosaline now watches from the side the rival that she would never know. Maybe Shakespeare's Rosaline would have been happy for Juliet-that she had discovered someone to give her heart to, just as her heart belonged already to God. If Rosaline was so pious, that was a given, probably.

Dropping off after a few feet, the back of the stage sank into the woody part of the park, a sparse but pretty enclave off center of town. My performance done for the night, I wandered off, thinking about how many times over the years that girls had played Rosaline. I wondered what happened to each of them. If they got married, or went to another city somewhere to find work, friends, family. If they were the popular ones in school, and that was why they were chosen. Or if they were like me, and just in the right place to fill in.

Something crunched. I stopped, automatically frozen. I could hear the play going on, and I thought I made out the friar conspiring with Romeo. Then, faintly, I began to make out something else, and although I brushed it off at first, it became much clearer.

There was more crunching...twigs breaking under feet...and someone crying. Instinctively, I stepped toward the sound, a low keaning. A whining, almost. It sounded like someone had hurt themselves. I imagined a little girl had wandered away from the crowd and gotten lost in the darkness of evening. She'd fallen, most likely. Over a tree root or-

It stopped. Footsteps came my way, and I backed up, nearly falling into the stage platform where it jutted into the trees. I was paranoid, I decided. It had probably been a rabbit, caught by a hawk. They always made that awful sound that squeezed my heart like a vice. I had cried a number off times over dead wild animals, even though hunting was a pretty normal thing in Maine, and I was supposedly not a toddler anymore.

We all have our weaknesses. The audience burst into a small round of applause, possibly at Mercutio's demise-one of Rosaline High's best actors was in the role-and I took up my place beside the curtain, watching what remained of the last Act. Finally, the Chorus came out again, and it was "a tale of woe than Juliet and Romeo" and The End, and the cast returned to the stage for a last bow. As the town's namesake, I got a much undeserved extra ovation.

As I took my bow, unable to help a smile at so many pleased spectators, I caught a dark figure in the right of the fold-out seats. Elijah, clad as usual in a dusky suit that blended well into the night. I might have been mistaken, but when he caught my gaze, he raised his clapping hands, nodded.

I ducked my head, embarassed at staring, and took my place hand in hand with the rest of the actors, and, bowing once again, glanced quickly around to see if I could find Ray to congratulate her. She wasn't there. Nik hadn't been beside his brother, though, so she was probably with him. We stepped off the stage and started to mingle with the crowd, laughing and shaking hands. Fathers slapped their sons' backs, daughters were hugged, students were commended for their participation in such a wonderful town tradition. There'd be an after party at the town hall later.

"Have you seen Ray?" I spun around to see our director, a woman named Leslie Ford, smiling cautiously down at me. She was a tall, friendly woman with white hair. She looked over my head while I paused. "I was trying to find her to tell her what a great job she did tonight! Was that her first time acting?"

"Um...yeah, it was. I haven't seen her, though. Was she in the last call?"

Leslie was distracted, waving to someone behind me. "Oh, uh, I don't think so." She frowned. "It's a shame, she did so well. But she went off with that boyfriend of hers...I'll have to talk to him...it's not quite appropriate to date a student..."

My heart stopped. "She's with Nik?" I felt like every moment they spent together was another chance for her to get more alienated from me, from Therese. Wasn't that a sign of abuse? "Did you see where they went?" I chided myself for such a stupid question-onviously she hadn't, or she wouldn't have asked me.

She shook her head. "Nope. Just got into that car of his and drove off. You'll excuse me? Hi, Suzanna!" Leslie went off in pursuit of one of the extras, probably to tell her how great she'd done.

"Suzanna, what happened?" I heard crying behind me. The sound of a wounded animal. For a second, I thought someone had brought in the dying rabbit I had heard earlier in the woods. I couldn't believe someone would be so dim; but when I found the rush of people around Party Guest 2, I knew I was just indulging in wishful thinking when I told myself it had been a rabbit.

It was Suzanna that was dying. People backed off as Leslie half dragged, half walked the weeping blonde out of the theater. Someone called for a medic, and our director tried to pry Suzanna's hands off of her neck, where blood seemed to be gushing. Her breath rattled as she tried to calm down enough to speak. "I don't know...I was just backstage." Leslie held her tightly, still working against my classmate's bloody hands.

"Suzanna. Let me see." Her hands fell away, a new round of tears racking her body with terrified sobs. Those of us that had crowded in to form a protective barrier around Suzanna couldn't restrain disgusted gasps.

Someone groaned, "Oh man."

She gave an ugly sniff. "I think it was an animal..."

At the base of her long, white neck, two obvious puncture wounds poured blood onto her dress. The blood soaked through the thin fabric, once a robin's egg blue, and turned into a puddle at her collarbone.

Maybe I was paranoid. But at that moment I ran out of the park, certain that I knew what had done that damage, whether it was possible or not. Real or not real. Maybe I was dreaming. But every negative feeling I'd had for the past two days welled up inside of me, and as if my heart was struggling to get out of my body through my chest, I yelled to Ray, wherever she was.

Because I knew that Nik had done that to Suzanna. Was going to do it to her. And I had to find her before it was too late.