Spark

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.

—William Shakespeare,
As You Like It

W
hen I dream, it's always on a screen. And I'm always in the Avery Theater. And the Avery is always new—not the rotting, early-1900s building it is today. Every one of my dreams starts as I prop my sneakers into the balcony seat, hug my knees, and stare at the ornate gilded box seats, the brass faces of the theater. I get that dip in my stomach—the one that's like a horn blaring, announcing excitement is on its way. And I smile as the red velvet curtains part and the ancient projector pops to life.

In my most recurring dream, I see my mom, Dahlia, when she's a little girl. It's 1947, and she's bursting from the side exit of the Avery Theater, squealing in pain and fear as the nearby bushes grab her brown pigtails and yank her backward.

It makes total sense, really. Why wouldn't I dream about
this? It's been my bedtime story since I was in pigtails, too. Always the last thing I ever heard before falling asleep.

So it's this same scene, flashing across the screen of my mind: Dahlia's Mary Janes clicking as she races across the town square of Verona, Missouri. But she stops, her eyes wide, chest heaving, as she glances at the businesses that line the small town square. Few lights are still on, so late on that summer night. She whimpers because she knows no one will believe her, not about two bodies lying on a stage, not about Nick and Emma being hurt. “Oh, you silly little girl,” they'll all say, rolling their eyes and scooting her back onto the sidewalk. “Trouble,” everyone calls her, the eight-year-old busybody who's always barging into the florist or the hardware store or the barber's, telling whoppers and getting tangled up in shopkeepers' legs.

But tonight there
is
trouble. There's been a horrible fight inside the theater—and an accident. Involving Emma, the daughter of the Avery's owner; Emma, the very first female valedictorian of Verona High; Emma, who has college waiting for her; Emma, who has always been so kind to Dahlia, letting her have free Slo Pokes from the Avery concession stand. Emma's been hurt. Bad. And so has Emma's boyfriend, Nick, the out-of-town musician. Dahlia's afraid for Nick, too—even though he does call her Grace, after the smallest note in all of music, when Dahlia hates being reminded that she's small, powerless, just a little girl.

Dying,
she thinks.
They might be dying.

Dahlia glances up toward her mother's hat store. Her mother is one of the few still up, and she's changing the front-window display, putting out the new straw sun hats that recently arrived from California, special delivery.

But it would only take the mention of the Avery for her mother to frown and shout, “You slipped out of your room without permission to bother
George
again?” She won't believe that George, Emma's father, needs their help. She'll only get after Dahlia for telling another wild story. She'll be embarrassed that her little girl's causing trouble again.

Dahlia swallows the scream building up in her throat when she turns to see the only person in town who's never called her by that awful pet name. Who's never said, “Well, if it isn't Trouble,” when she comes skipping past.

“Bertie.” Dahlia breathes with relief, her feet attacking the pavement as she races to her side. “Help! Emma—Nick—they—” Dahlia jabs her trembling finger into the air, pointing toward the theater marquee that advertises, “TONIGHT! EMMA HASTINGS AS HOPE HARCOURT IN ANYTHING GOES!”

But Bertie's eyes are fixed on the sky beyond the theater, where the horizon burns a strange yellow-green—even though the sunset faded hours ago. Odd flames leap, forging a path through the stars. “The sky is talking to us, Dahlia,” she whispers. “We're too far south to see the aurora borealis, so it can't
be that. It's more. It's magic.” At her side, the slender fingers of her right hand clutch the edge of the journal she always carries with her; its pages rustle in a sudden breeze, flipping back and forth.

“No! No more talking skies,” Dahlia replies. “That stuff's bonkers. Nick and Emma—they need help.” Disappointment makes her face droop. But she should have known, really. Bertie is a lot of things—she's eighteen, for starters. The same age as the two people dying on the Avery stage. She's also a kook—or so the entirety of Verona has proclaimed. Tragedy has scrambled her brains, poor thing, and now she walks the streets of town muttering gobbledygook about the skies talking. And magic.

Which means that mostly, Bertie is terrifying. Because it's easy to dismiss a crazy old woman. Wrinkles and white hair and an arthritic bend in the shoulders are easy to shrug away. But a crazy
young
woman, who is physically strong and can keep up with you if you try to run—she's terrifying. To everyone but Dahlia, anyway.

“Look how the stars are beginning to pop,” Bertie instructs. “Do you see the shape they're taking? The stars are forming an X. It's a sign! I know it is.” She flips through her journal, as though searching for a line that will help her decode the message in the sky.

Bertie was a writer, too—just like I am. Or maybe it's that we're secret writers. Nothing more than scribblers, actually. But
why wouldn't we be so similar? Bertie, the biggest kook to have ever lived in Verona, Missouri, was my great-grandmother. Biological. And Dahlia, the little girl begging for help in the Verona square, the little girl who always had a soft spot for Bertie, is the one who adopted me.

Which is surely another reason why this dream keeps finding me. It makes me feel like we're all three a set of those nesting dolls—Dahlia a step larger than me, Bertie a step larger than Dahlia. All of us stacked one on top of each other. Me at the bottom.

Like it always does at this point in the dream, a siren wails, growing louder as a single red fire truck tears through the streets of Verona.

Headlights flash into Dahlia's eyes; the horn blares its warning.

Dahlia grabs Bertie's arm, tugging her backward, making her step out of the fire truck's path. The speeding truck kicks up enough wind to push Dahlia's pigtails back, dry out her eyes.

Shouts burst like firecrackers against the night as an emergency crew climbs from the fire truck, and as the front door of the Avery flies open.

“Don't tell me it's too late,” Emma's father begs the firefighters. “It can't be.”

“Did this happen on the stage?” Bertie gasps.

“Yes,” Dahlia whispers.

Bertie frowns, concentrating. “The stage. And the way the stars are lined up to form that X . . .” She drops her journal, grabbing Dahlia by the shoulders. “Star-crossed lovers!

“A real-life Romeo and Juliet. Right here—in fair Verona! It's a play—it happened on the stage, just like this. You know the story, don't you? Everyone does. They were torn apart, Romeo and Juliet, by outside forces—their families didn't want them to be together. Just like George was afraid that Emma would run off with Nick! Yes! It's all the same, don't you see?”

Dahlia shrinks, pulling her arms free at the same moment that the Avery marquee throws electric sparks into the sky, higher even than the odd green flames. And then it goes dark. Beneath the green swirls in the sky, the front of the theater turns black. The bricks crackle like decaying autumn leaves. The building withers on fast forward. It instantly becomes dilapidated and ramshackle, with cracked windows and broken front steps and a torn awning. The gargoyles along the roof darken, and their faces disappear as though they've all been rubbed away by decades of rough weather.

“Did you see that?” Bertie whispers. “The Avery just died.”

This, too, is nuts. Deep inside, all those years ago, Dahlia knew it. I've always known it, too—even when the grown-up Dahlia, who'd officially become “Mom,” first started telling me this story, her voice rising and falling between her dramatic pauses. Even back when I first started having my dream. It's funny—I never did dream of Cinderella or princesses. But
then, I never did get those kinds of bedtime stories. Maybe Mom, nearly retired by the time I was adopted, had a different idea about what was right to tell kids at night. A different idea about what made a great story. Maybe Cinderella bored her. But the square—and the Avery, which was at one time a living, breathing theater, a theater whose heart stopped beating the first time a true (and not play-pretend) tragedy unfolded on its stage—never did stop fascinating her.

Still, though, I knew it—even when I first heard the tale. I knew it was full of nonsense spouted long ago by a woman with scrambled brains. A dead building. A dead theater. Sure.

“But in the play, you know,” Bertie tells little Dahlia, “Juliet took a drug, and was dead but not dead. She came back. The skies are talking to us, making a promise. Yes. This story isn't finished. It's not over. Don't you see?”

Bertie tilts Dahlia's chin so they can look each other square in the face. “Listen to me,” she demands. “When the right hearts come to the Avery—at the right time—for the right reasons—this sky will return. The magic of the theater will return. The Avery will come back from the dead.”

It's always at this point in the dream when I jerk myself awake, achy and sweaty. Like I do every single time without fail, I kick at the covers and grab my glasses from my nightstand. I pad across my bedroom floor, press my face against the window. And look up and down the square for any sign of magic.

After all, Dahlia and I still live where she has spent the entirety of her seventy-plus years, right here above the old hat store (which is no longer a hat store but a perfumery). We live on the opposite side of the square—directly across from the Avery Theater. In full view of any magic that just might want to show its quirky face.

I squint, inspecting the black brick and the rotten facade for some sign of life. For the aurora borealis to start swirling through the sky.

But the Avery is dead. As it has been dead since that fateful night back in 1947 when two star-crossed lovers really did die on the stage. When my mom really did witness the tragedy.

The sky is dark.

I shake my head. Who am I to expect something magical to happen for me? I'm the great-granddaughter of the biggest kook to have ever walked the streets of Verona, Missouri. I'm a B-average student with big glasses and plain hair. Magic is for girls who have far flashier backgrounds and powers and look like drawings of superheroes in comic books.

At least, that's what I've always believed. That's the kind of thing I always wind up telling myself after one of these dreams.

But right here, at the beginning of it all, I have no idea how wrong I am about that.