I should have let her deal with the mess the next morning. The water dripping from her leggings on to the floor had started to pool though, and I actually cared about keeping the living conditions here a few levels above a camping ground’s shared amenities.
When we met up again in the park for our next practice session, she didn’t so much as acknowledge the fact that she’d woken up to a basket of dry and folded clothes (including her current T-shirt, with weird naked baby angels all over it). Instead of showing gratitude, she pulled a face every single time my hands wrapped around her waist to lift her on to the horse.
Renee watched the first few lifts from various vantage points before making us change our moves and the way we were angled to the horse. She then went back to watch the new lift from her chosen locations. We repeated that process until she clapped her hands from the steps of Miss Clementine’s Café and jogged across the square. “What if we tie her hands?”
“No,” I replied without missing a beat. “She can barely keep herself upright as is, and Tornado isn’t even moving yet.”
Esra jutted her chin out from where she was leaning sideways in the saddle. “How on earth did someone like you end up working here?”
“Someone like me?”
“This place is fun. You’re… you.”
“Thefunis for visitors,” I pointed out. “Those of us who work here actually treat it as a workplace.”
“Sanny still has fun in the park.” She raised her brows at me as if I should take that as a challenge. “I just think you should enjoy the job you choose.”
“Makes sense coming from you. Is that why you dropped out of school? Wasn’t fun enough?”
“Yeah, I thought it would be so much more fun to spend my days around you and your smelly cow.” She crinkled her nose down at Tornado, who huffed and shook his head as if he understood the sentiment.
“Wow, we’ve stooped to insulting my horse? Very mature.”
“I think we’re done for today,” Renee interrupted us, levelling her gaze on me. “Save your breath for tomorrow. We’ll hook you both up to microphones, so we can practice the full scene.”
I was close to defending myself by saying that Esra had started it, and I was actually okay to keep going, but considering I’d criticized Esra’s maturity,“she started it”didn’t seem like the way to go.
I forgot my maturity later that night though, when I opened the kitchen cabinet. I’d only meant to cook myself dinner, but Esra’s shelf taunted me. She had a couple necessities, but everything else was quick snacks and pure sugar. Eyeing her jar of peanut butter, I ran my hand over my chin.
This was stupid. What was that saying about an eye for an eye leaving everyone blind?
I turned to shoot a look at the empty kitchen doorway. I listened for any footsteps. Nothing. Nobody.
Setting my jaw, I grabbed the bag of Reese’s from her shelf, only to hide it behind my own jar of peanut butter. That was for calling Tornado a cow. Besides, that stuff was unhealthy anyway.
My immaturity earned me intense eye contact the next morning. I could have chalked up the death glares she greeted me with outside the bank building to her superb Annie Lou acting skills, but I had a feeling they were chocolate-related.
“Good morning.” I plastered on a smile for Renee’s benefit. “How were the rests of your days yesterday?”
“Fine, fine, thank you.” Renee waved me off, twirling her pen through the air while she hunched over a stack of paper.
“Loved my afternoon in the park, loved the Haunted Mines ride,” Esra replied, squinting at me, “but my dinner was lacking a little something.”
Yeah, fuck, maybe it was immature, but vindication tasted better than any peanut butter chocolate confection could. It took every drop of restraint in my veins to keep my lips tight as I nodded and hummed an understanding note.
“Okay, here we go.” Renee shoved a sheet of paper at each of us. “Commit to memory, please.”
We each had four whole lines of dialogue in the revised scene before Esra’s escape on foot. Short enough to memorize in the twenty minutes it took Renee to fix a mic pack to Esra’s obstructively tight daisy-print leggings, snake the small beige headset under her hair and around her ears, and explain the control switch on the pack. I hadn’t touched that switch once. Our microphones were controlled remotely during the show. That switch was just for emergencies, and allowed us to switch between normal mode, intercom or turning the mics off altogether.
“Say something for me, Esra,” Renee said, clipping on her own headset.
“I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will—”
“Got it,” Austin’s voice cracked through our earpieces. “Thank you, Homer.”
“Hippocrates, not Homer,” Esra replied as she turned in a circle. Instead of finding the source of Austin’s voice, her eyes landed on me. Her head dropped sideways, waves of chocolate hair spilling over her shoulder as her forehead wrinkled in confusion and her big doe eyes rounded out.
It wasn’t even the full costume. Merely the part that would influence the microphone. There was no need to look at me like I’d grown a second head just because I’d pulled a black bandana over the bottom half of my face.
