The Backstagers and the Final Blackout Read online

  Bailey pulled away after a glorious few seconds and chuckled. Beckett did, too.

  When the lights hanging above them began to flicker, Beckett wondered if he might be about to faint, but when he heard the other students reacting to the malfunction, he knew that it wasn’t all in his head. Bailey looked around at the sputtering, flashing bulbs. Suddenly, the lights blacked out completely, cloaking the glittering dance floor in total darkness.

  Down in the Club Room, Jory, Hunter, Aziz, Adrienne, Sasha, and Reo happily loosened their constricting bow ties and removed their painful dress shoes.

  Totally unknown to the rest of the student body of St. Genesius, the Club Room was a place where the Backstagers could be totally themselves. It was an epic theater-nerd cave, packed with artifacts from Genesius shows past, the walls covered in graffiti from all the Backstagers who had come before. As fun as it was to play dress-up for one night, they all knew that in this safe space, the real party was about to begin.

  Just as Sasha got the beat-up little radio in the corner to awaken from its slumber and play some music, the door swung open to reveal two beaming seniors.

  “Timothy! Jamie!” Hunter cheered.

  “I had a feeling you kids would be down here!” Jamie said. He’d tamed his normally unruly long, brown hair into a tight bun and had trimmed his bushy beard for the occasion.

  “Dang, Jamie, lookin’ sharp!” Jory said as he and Hunter sunk into an ancient couch.

  “Isn’t he, though?” Timothy said. He’d slicked his long blond hair back, accentuating his angular face. He gave Jamie an affectionate kiss on the cheek. “For stage managers, I do think we clean up nice!”

  “Now, who wants bubbles?” Timothy said as he made his way toward the refrigerator in the corner of the room.

  “Um, what do you mean?” Hunter asked, ever the caretaker of the group.

  “A rare vintage I’ve been saving for tonight, to celebrate!”

  Timothy opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a two-liter bottle of a clear soda with a very retro-looking label.

  “Oh my gosh,” Aziz marveled. “Is that . . .”

  “Crystal Pepsi. Discontinued since 1994!” Timothy said.

  “I thought you were kidding about that,” Jamie said, shaking his head.

  “If that still bubbles,” Jory said, “I will be even more terrified of what happens to us if we drink it.”

  “It’s most definitely a cursed beverage,” Reo said, eyebrow cocked.

  “Oh come on, guys,” Timothy said as he started filling plastic cups with the miraculously still-fizzy beverage. “Live a little! We’re toasting the end of a spectacular season AND some pretty big news that Jamie and I have to share with you all.”

  “You’re getting MARRIED?!” Sasha leaped up from a beanbag and toppled right to the floor again.

  “. . . Erm, no,” Timothy said. “The big news is, we were both accepted to Wolverine University!”

  “You GUYS!” Hunter said, jumping up to embrace them. “Your first-choice school! That’s incredible!”

  “It’s pretty amazing,” Timothy said. “I mean, it’s a great school, of course, but what I’m most excited about is that we’ll get to experience it together.”

  “. . . Totally!” Jamie agreed, though some of the light dimmed in his eyes.

  The Backstagers each took a cup of the ancient soda and formed a circle.

  “Adrienne, what’s the sign for ‘Cheers’?” Aziz asked.

  “It’s very difficult,” Adrienne said as she raised her cup high and smiled.

  Everyone laughed.

  “To Timothy and Jamie!” Hunter said. “The two best stage managers St. Genesius ever had. And the best Wolverines that there will ever be!”

  The Backstagers all whooped and cheered.

  “And to the Backstagers who take up our legacy after we leave,” Timothy said. “We raised you well. I know that no matter what happens, you all can handle it. To the Backstagers!”

  “TO THE BACKSTAGERS!”

  Just as they raised their cups, the lights in the room began to flicker on and off.

  “What the heck?” Aziz said. “Power short from the dance?”

  “No way,” Sasha replied. “I juiced the lights upstairs with a power crystal from the backstage. It should be plenty.”

  He stepped toward a bare lightbulb that hung in the center of the room that blinked off and on frenetically. A vague shape was beginning to materialize inside the glass. Gazing into the bulb, Sasha said, “You guys . . . it’s . . . Phoebe!”

  The Backstagers exchanged a worried look and gathered around to see for themselves.

  “Who?” Adrienne asked Aziz in ASL.

  “Phoebe Murphy,” he replied.

  Adrienne’s heart dropped because, of course, Phoebe Murphy was the ghost who haunted the backstage. She lived in the Arch Theater at the heart of the backstage, where all theater magic came from, protecting the backstage and all of its treasures. For her to reach out to them from her peaceful watch could only mean danger.

  And, indeed, in the space where its filament should be, there was now the spectral face of a young girl, her hair in pom-poms. She was mouthing something, a silent plea from inside the bulb.

  “What is she saying? I can’t tell,” Reo said.

  “I can,” Adrienne said, reading her lips. “She’s saying, ‘Help me’!”

  CHAPTER 2

  The Backstagers changed from their formal wear to their crew blacks as quickly as they could and made their way through the Unsafe door at the back of the Club Room.

  As soon as they stepped across its boundary, they entered into another world, the world of the backstage, where theater magic was real—living, breathing, and dangerous.

  The Backstagers had passed down the secrets of this magical world to each new generation who passed through their stage doors, and thus, when it was in danger, it was up to the Backstagers to protect it, even if that meant cutting short the most celebratory night of their high school lives.

  They raced through the tunnels, the starry maze between the specialized rooms that housed the elements of theater, toward a set of double doors labeled THE GREENROOM.

  They passed through the double doors and the galactic darkness of the tunnels gave way to a perfect sunny day in a vast, grassy field. The Greenroom was a special hub that Jory and Reo had created together. Each of the doors that stood in a row along the edges of the field were labeled according to their destination: the Prop Room, the Paint Room, and so on. Tonight, they headed for the very last door in the row, which was labeled VERY UNSAFE. When they reached it, Hunter looked to his crew to make sure they were ready for whatever they might face inside. Everyone nodded solemnly.

  The Very Unsafe door was labeled as such because beyond it lay the Arch Theater, the most unsafe place in all of the backstage. It was the very heart of all theater magic, where time became nonlinear, creativity became instantly manifest, and literally anything could happen.

  It had become a bit less scary when the Backstagers befriended Phoebe and convinced her to guard it from less benevolent spirits, but now they feared that something had come along that even Phoebe couldn’t keep away on her own.

  They were perhaps most concerned about a secret Phoebe guarded there: the Backstagers’ collection of legendary theater artifacts, tools of unrivaled power that were the very building blocks of theater itself. If Phoebe was in danger, so were the artifacts. And if those got into the wrong hands, there was no telling what would happen next.

  When they had all passed through the Very Unsafe door, the Backstagers found themselves on the stage of the Arch Theater, where Phoebe held a scepter over her head. The bare light bulb at its end cast a sphere of bluish white light all around her. At the edge of the sphere of light, a figure bashed against the light with a hammer, but the hammer smacked off of the edge of the sphere as if it were solid. With every forceful bash, the sphere of light flickered but did not go out.

  �
�Phoebe!” Sasha called out to the ghost. “We’re here to rescue you!”

  “Hey, you there! Stop that right now!” Hunter commanded to the figure.

  The figure stopped his pummeling and looked up toward the Backstagers. His face was hidden by a stone mask, an ancient face contorted in a wail of tragedy.

  “Thiasos,” Jory whispered, because this was the signature mask of the evil organization determined to gather all of the legendary theater artifacts. After being kidnapped by the organization earlier in the year, Jory knew their masks all too well. However, as the figure turned back toward the sphere of light, Jory saw that this mask was actually slightly different than the ones worn by a regular Thiasos soldier, for on the back of his head there was another face with a twisted comedian’s smile.

  The figure dropped the hammer, then reached into a small pouch on a bulky leather tool belt that hung at his waist. Jory gasped when the figure then pulled, impossibly, an entire sledgehammer out of the pouch.

  The figure turned and stared for a moment through his stone eyes at the Backstagers, who still stood clustered at the back wall of the stage. Then, he resumed his assault on the sphere, which flickered more violently with each hit from the massive hammer.

  “NO!” Jory cried, making a dash toward the figure at the edge of the stage. Hunter grabbed him, stopping his advance.

  “Jory, are you crazy?! That’s a sledgehammer! You could get hurt!”

  “Well, there’s only one of him and there are eight of us! We go together!”

  Jory looked desperately to his friends.

  Sasha stepped forward and nodded. “We go together!”

  With a battle cry, the crowd of Backstagers charged toward the masked invader.

  The figure paused his hammering once again and reached back to his tool belt, unclipping a small box that hung off his hip. The masked figure tossed the box toward the encroaching Backstagers, and as the box sprung open, a second masked soldier leaped out from it, stopping the Backstagers in their tracks.

  They gasped. How could a fully grown person fit inside a box that was only a few square inches? There was no time to think about that, however, because a third soldier jumped out of the box and stood defiantly before the stunned Backstagers. Then a fourth. Then a fifth.

  As more and more Thiasos soldiers emerged from the box to form a human barrier, the double-faced assailant dropped his sledgehammer and reached into the pouch on his belt again. The figure pulled out a motorized jackhammer and placed the tip to the edge of the sphere of light.

  “Uh-oh,” was all Aziz could say.

  The jackhammer roared on, sending sparks flying off of the flickering sphere of light, which seemed like it could shatter at any moment. The line of guards, now numbering more than ten, began to move toward the terrified Backstagers.

  Timothy looked up to Phoebe, whose Ghost Light flashed and began to dim. “What do we do?!” he asked.

  “RUN!” she commanded.

  The line of Thiasos guards began to run toward the Backstagers, who had no choice but to retreat back through the Very Unsafe door.

  They made it through the door and slammed it shut behind them, locking it. The peaceful quiet of the sunny Greenroom was soon broken by the sound of fists pounding against the door from the other side.

  “How did they find the Arch Theater?!” Reo asked, his back against the door. “How did they even know to look there?”

  “I don’t know,” Jory said. “I thought the artifacts would be safe there.” It had been his idea to store the artifacts in the Arch Theater, and he sounded utterly defeated now.

  The pounding from the other side of the door stopped suddenly.

  “They stopped,” Aziz told Adrienne.

  “Is that a good thing?” she asked.

  “I’m not so sure,” he replied.

  And then the bright sun hanging above the Greenroom plunged below the horizon and the whole room was completely dark. Jory screamed. Adrienne took Aziz’s hand. Just as suddenly, the sun returned to its position, revealing terrified looks on the Backstagers’ faces.

  “They have the Master Switch,” Sasha said.

  “Which means they overpowered the Ghost Light,” Reo said.

  “They have all of them,” Hunter said ominously.

  “BACKSTAGERS OF GENESIUS, LISTEN WELL,” a roaring voice echoed across the whole field. Adrienne looked to Aziz for a translation, but he couldn’t sign while clutching his ears to muffle the sound. All the other Backstagers had their ears covered, too, so it was clear that the Thiasos soldiers must be communicating using the God Mic.

  “YOU HAVE LOST. WE HAVE THE GHOST LIGHT, MASTER SWITCH, GOD MIC, AND DESIGNER’S NOTEBOOK. WE DON’T NEED OR WANT ANYTHING ELSE FROM YOU AND WE DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU. STAY OUT OF THE BACKSTAGE FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING.”

  Jory turned to the group and said, “We have to get out of here right now.”

  “No,” Aziz said, “we have to get the artifacts back! Why would we run just because they said to?”

  “Because I drew this room in the Designer’s Notebook, remember?” Jory said. “And anything drawn in the Notebook can be—”

  Before he could finish, the Very Unsafe door that they had just passed through vanished, leaving behind a strange rectangle of blank whiteness.

  “ERASED!”

  One by one, each of the doors that lined the edges of the field disappeared. The Backstagers sprinted as fast as they could toward the double doors on the other side of the Greenroom while a massive streak of white cut across the blue sky above them. Stroke by stroke, it spread until the entire sky was replaced with vast white nothing.

  They were almost at the exit when the grass below Jory’s feet vanished in a swipe. He screamed as he tumbled backward into the nothingness, but Hunter’s hand grasped Jory’s just as he was about to be swallowed into the white void. Jory looked up at him, terrified, as he dangled above a blank white eternity. Hunter used all of his strength to pull Jory back onto the solid ground, but there was no time for Jory to thank him for saving his life—the ground all around them was disappearing rapidly.

  Leaping over fresh streaks of whiteness as they appeared, the team managed to reach the double doors, bursting through them back into the tunnel and landing in a heap. The double doors slammed shut before vanishing altogether. Where there had moments ago been the Greenroom, there was now just more of the indistinct darkness of the tunnels. The Greenroom was gone forever.

  “Are we all okay?” Timothy asked his crew, panting. He scanned the group. Jory, Hunter, Aziz, Reo, Sasha, Adrienne, and Jamie all looked deeply shaken but were thankfully unharmed.

  “Let’s get back to the Club Room,” Jamie said. “We aren’t safe back here.”

  When they slumped through the Unsafe door, Beckett leaped up from the ratty sofa where he’d been waiting for them.

  “THERE you guys are! They had to call off the rest of the dance due to technical problems. I tried to help, but we couldn’t figure it out,” he said. He then noticed their somber expressions and asked, “What were you doing in the backstage? And why are you out of your tuxes?”

  “The artifacts,” Hunter said, depleted. “They’re gone.”

  “. . . What?” Beckett sat back down.

  “It was Thiasos,” Jory said. “They’d sent a soldier. Or a small army of soldiers. Phoebe was warning us with the lights.”

  “No,” Beckett whispered.

  “We’ll explain everything,” Timothy said. “You all told your parents that we’re going out for burgers at the Hand Jive, right? That buys us a little time to debrief and make a plan.”

  “But Bailey is waiting upstairs with the Penitent girls for us to get those very burgers,” Beckett said. “What do I tell her?”

  “You’re gonna have to make something up, Beck,” Aziz said.

  “No, no, I can’t! She’ll be devastated.”

  “Beckett, Thiasos has all of our artifacts,” Jamie said, taking Beckett�
�s shoulders. “All of them, do you understand?”

  “I just thought we could take one night off from all of this,” Beckett said, defeated. The Backstagers shared a pitiful look. After a moment, he sighed. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh . . . oh my gosh, what did you all eat?!” Bailey asked.

  She and Beckett stood in front of the school as cars snaked their way around the parking lot, whisking the students away from the awkward dancing and toward comfier clothes, fattening food, and friendly hangs.

  “We, uh, we had some bean dip while we were getting ready,” Beckett lied. “Maybe it was the lettuce—I feel like they’re recalling lettuce, like, every day now.”

  “Totally,” Bailey said. She wore a mask of empathetic concern, but Beckett could tell that she was seriously bummed out.

  “Yeah, I honestly don’t know how I was spared but the Club Room is like a war zone right now. There’s only one bathroom down there and it’s very old and—”

  “I get it, Beck. Don’t need the visual.”

  “Right. Sorry. Anyway, I’m thinking burgers are like, not ideal right now.”

  “Yeah, maybe not.”

  “So . . . I guess I’ll just catch up with you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I guess I’ll just head home.” Bailey’s eyes sunk to the ground and Beckett felt the worst he’d ever felt in his life. Just then, thankfully, Adrienne appeared and wrapped her arm around Bailey’s shoulder.

  “I’m assuming Beckett told you about Pukefest. Man, I have never seen a color like that come out of a human body!”

  “Ugh, please spare me!” Bailey laughed. Beckett was relieved to see her smile.

  “Anyway,” Adrienne said, “I don’t know how I still have any appetite at all after what these eyes have seen, but I’m still down for burgers if you are, Bailey. All the Penitent girls are going. Come so we can compare notes on these boys’ dance moves!”