The Red Slippers (12 page)

“WHAT DO WE DO?” BESS
asked.

“You know he has something planned,” George said. “This guy was a professional piano player by age fourteen. He's determined.”

“We need to get into his dressing room,” I said. “Maybe there's a clue in there.”

“How do we get there?” Ned asked.

“Around back,” Bess said. “There's a stage door we can go through.”

“We have to go outside and around the building?” Ned asked.

Bess nodded. Ned looked at me on my crutches. After a beat, he wrapped his arm around me, handed my crutches to George, and swooped me up, holding me like a baby.

“Forgive the indignity,” Ned said, “but this is going to be a lot faster than you hobbling through the snow. Safer, too.”

“All right,” I said, “Let's find out what Sebastian is up to.”

As we made our way around the building to the stage door, I was glad that it was cold and the area outside the theater was empty. We must have made for an odd sight: the four of us sneaking through the parking lot, George and Bess each carrying a crutch, and Ned carrying me.

Bess opened the stage door and Ned put me down. I got my crutches back and we made our way down the hall.

We made it past the greenroom, where all the dancers who weren't onstage waited their turn. A group of them played cards. Others were on their cell phones. A few stretched. A video feed showed the performance onstage, so they could see when they needed to get to the wings.

“This is it,” Bess said, pointing to a door on the right.

She tried the knob, but it was locked.

“Now what?” George asked.

“I can probably break in,” Ned said, leaning back to throw his shoulder against the door.

“I have a better idea,” I said, nodding at George. She grinned, reached into her bag, and pulled out a set of lock picks. “No need for both of us to get hurt.”

“I wouldn't have been hurt,” Ned protested.

“Did you get a new set?” I asked George as she knelt in front of the lock.

“My aunt gave me some money for Christmas,” George explained. “It was either this or a GPS tracker.” She stuck two picks in the lock and started working one around inside carefully, sticking her tongue out unconsciously as she tried to manipulate the pin inside the lock. George had taught me some of the rudimentary principles of lock picking, but it was as much an art form as a science, and George had the magic touch.

Sweat beaded on her forehead as she continued to work. Her brow creased in worry. I could feel myself starting to get anxious that this was taking too long, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want George to feel any more pressure.

“I could still break it open,” Ned said.

“Got it!” George exclaimed. She turned the knob and we were in.

We scanned the room, which was incredibly tidy. Sebastian's casual clothes hung neatly in a closet. Piles of sheet music sat on a table. There was a backpack in the corner.

“Are you sure there's going to be a clue in here?” Ned asked. “This room looks barren.”

“There has to be something. The app on Maggie's phone, the poster, the scenery—all required research and planning. Sebastian hasn't done anything spontaneous. If my hunch is right, he's been thinking about getting revenge on Jamison for a long time. We'll find something that indicates what he has planned next.”

We stepped farther into the room. Bess took the desk, George went to the vanity, Ned sprinted to the closet, and I headed toward the backpack in the corner.

“If there's anything that seems weird, flag it. It could be a clue. Sebastian is smart. It may not be obvious what his plan is.”

I could hear my friends opening drawers and rummaging through Sebastian's belongings as I dumped the contents of the bag onto the floor. A phone charger, some gum, a toiletries kit, and an old photo album. I flipped through the photos. They were all of him and his sister. It started when they were preschool age and ended with Veronica holding up her offer letter from the New York City Ballet. From the pictures, it was clear that they were incredibly close. They were always hugging and smiling and genuinely seemed to be proud of each other and all their accomplishments. Even though I knew that what Sebastian was doing was wrong, I could understand the pain he felt seeing his sister suffer.

But I didn't see a single clue. Just for the sake of doing something, I emptied the toiletries kit on the table, but all it had was a toothbrush, deodorant, a comb, and a bottle of talcum powder.

George came over. “Nothing of note in the closet. You find anything?”

I shook my head.

“The only thing I've learned is that this guy must have really stinky feet.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“How much talcum powder does one guy need?” George asked, picking up the bottle that was on the table.

“You found talcum powder too?” I asked.

“Yeah, a bottle about three-quarters full.” She shook the bottle. “This one has less, but it's still at least half full.”

“Can I see the bottle you found on the vanity?” I asked George.

George brought it back to me. The bottle was the same size and color as the talcum powder I'd found, but the logo was different. I looked closer.

“This isn't talcum powder. This is orthochloro-benzalmalononitrile,” I said, sounding it out.

“In English?” George asked.

“That's the main chemical in tear gas!” Ned exclaimed. “We talked about it in my chemistry class last semester. Tear gas is actually a powder.”

I hastily set the bottle down.

“It has to get over a certain temperature to emit a gas, which is when it causes all the symptoms, like crying, sneezing, difficulty breathing, and so on,” Ned continued.

“Is there a way Sebastian could get the stage area hot enough to emit the gas?” I asked. “Having a bunch of dancers onstage crying and coughing is going to make the choreography look pretty bad.”

“The Fresnels,” George said. “They're the biggest lights, and they get really hot. I heard the crew talking about it when I was undercover. If you touch them without gloves, you can actually burn your flesh.”

“That's disgusting,” Bess said.

“We have to get those lights turned off,” I said.

Ned scooped me up again, George and Bess grabbed my crutches, and we made it back to the front door of the theater.

Ignoring the ushers who tried to stop us, we entered the theater as quietly as we could. A few people turned to glare at us, and I felt bad for distracting them, but I reminded myself that getting hit by tear gas would be even more distracting. George led the way to the lighting booth, and we pushed our way in, shutting the door behind us.

Jamison sat in the booth behind the crew member running the board, watching the show. His head snapped toward us. It was tight quarters with all of us piled in.

“Are you kidding me? How many times and how many different ways do I have to tell you to get out of my theater?”

The crew member working the lighting board stayed focused on the show, studiously ignoring the commotion we were causing.

“You have to turn off the Fresnels,” I said.

Jamison turned to the board operator. “Don't you dare turn those lights off, Kevin.” He turned back to us. “Forget the police. I'm having you sent straight to the loony bin, because you have clearly lost your mind. If we cut the Fresnels, three-quarters of the stage will be dark.”

“Better than one hundred percent of the dancers crying and coughing,” George said.

“What on earth are you prattling on about? None of you are making any sense.”

“Sebastian put tear gas on the Fresnels. When the lights get hot enough, tear gas will spread through this entire theater,” I said.

Jamison opened his mouth, presumably to tell us we were crazy again, but he paused. I could see him putting the pieces together.

“Do you have definitive proof?” he asked.

“We found this in Sebastian's dressing room,” Bess said, handing Jamison the bottle of tear gas.

“I don't buy it,” Jamison said.

“That's proof,” George said, exasperated. “What more do you want?”

“I don't know what orthochlorobenzalmalononitrile even is,” he scoffed. “You could be pulling a prank on me, getting me back for belittling you earlier.”

“If you didn't treat people so badly, you wouldn't have to worry about that,” Bess muttered under her breath.

Onstage, a dancer sneezed. “It's starting,” I said to Kevin, the board operator. If Jamison wouldn't see sense, maybe I could appeal to Kevin. “You have to turn off the lights right now.”

Kevin looked at Jamison, clearly unsure what to do. “Don't do it,” Jamison ordered.

From the stage, another sneeze. “Kevin, come on,” I implored.

Now a cough. If we didn't cut those lights now, it was only going to get worse.

Kevin looked back and forth between me and Jamison. I could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to figure out who he should listen to.

Another cough.

“Kevin—” Jamison started, but before could finish, Kevin sprang into action.

“I'm sorry. Don't kill me,” Kevin said as his hands flew over the lighting board, and suddenly, just as Jamison had predicted, more than half the stage was dark. The audience gasped, but Jamison had trained his dancers well. They kept going as if nothing had happened.

“Thank you,” I said to Kevin. “You did the right thing. Now can you make sure that a crew member removes the powder from the lights at intermission?”

He nodded.

For the first time since we'd encountered him, Jamison was speechless. He seemed completely in shock. I wasn't going to wait around for him to start yelling again. I turned back to my friends. “Let's get backstage and tell Maggie the case is solved,” I said. “Her big solo is right after intermission. I want her to feel completely confident.”

Backstage was chaos. Intermission had just started, and the dancers were all abuzz about the lights going out. We couldn't find Maggie anywhere.

“Where's Maggie?” I asked Fiona.

“I think I saw her go into Sebastian's dressing room,” Fiona said.

We rushed there as fast as we could.

The door was locked, but we could hear the muffled sound of Maggie crying. “Why are you doing this? I thought you were my friend!”

“My turn,” Ned said, as he put his shoulder into the door with all his might. The door flew open with a groan. Maggie was tied to the chair and Sebastian was pacing in front of her.

“I'm sorry,” he was saying. “I was trying to protect you. But Jamison cut the lights. He knows about the tear gas. There's no other way to destroy Jamison and save you from him.”

“Sebastian,” I said. “I know why you're doing it, but this isn't justice. This isn't taking care of Maggie.”

He looked over at me, completely destroyed.

“I told her not to dance tonight. I didn't want Maggie to get hurt, but Jamison broke her. He needs to pay,” Sebastian said.

“Not like this,” I said. “Innocent people could have been really hurt from the tree falling. And the tear gas!”

“What are you talking about? Who needs to pay?” Maggie asked from the chair.

“You have to tell her,” I said to Sebastian.

He looked at me, then glanced at Ned, George, and Bess blocking the exit.

“Jamison. He needs to pay . . . for what he did to Veronica.”

Maggie looked at him confused. “He got her into the New York City Ballet,” she began.

Sebastian looked enraged. “But at what cost? He got her into the New York City Ballet, but now she's in a mental institution. You want to know why she doesn't return your calls? It's because she's not allowed access to her phone.”

“What?” Maggie said, shocked.

“Veronica loved to dance . . . until she met Jamison. Then nothing she did was ever good enough. He kept pushing her, critiquing every little thing she did. He insulted her. Told her she didn't work hard enough, but all she ever did was work. You saw her.”

“But that's how you become great,” Maggie said.

Sebastian shook his head. “You didn't see her in the months before she left. You were in Paris on that exchange program, but she was a nervous wreck. When she finally got to New York, she said she could still hear Jamison's voice echoing through her head, all day, every day. With the added competition and the pressure, she lost it. Next thing we knew, we were getting a call from the emergency room that Veronica had been admitted due to a nervous breakdown.” He paused and knelt in front of Maggie. “I saw him doing the same thing to you, and I couldn't stand it. I couldn't let him destroy you like he destroyed Veronica.”

Tears ran down Maggie's face. “I can take it,” she said. “I promise. He's not going to destroy me.”