Well Played, стр. 30

Sign-ups for Faire are Saturday at 10. Can I count on you to help out as usual?

Of course, I texted back immediately. Wouldn’t miss it!

Thank you. You’re great at recruiting the adults.

I know. I couldn’t hide my smirk as I tapped out my reply. I got Emily on board a couple years ago, after all. I’d been the one to shove a clipboard in her hands and gently break it to her that if her niece Caitlin wanted to be in the cast, then Emily had to be too. The rule was barely enforced, but to my surprise Emily hadn’t dropped out, as most well-meaning parents did. She’d been dedicated, and after some initial clashes of personality with Simon, she’d become pretty dedicated to him too.

You did, Simon texted back. There was a pause as he kept typing. Been meaning to thank you for that.

I grinned at my phone. Simon was not an effusive guy; for him that was practically a squee. See you Saturday morning. I’ll be there an hour early.

I was true to my word. I met Simon at Willow Creek High School—our alma mater and his employer—bright and early that Saturday morning. He unlocked the building and turned on the lights in the auditorium, and I sorted out stacks of forms, attaching them to clipboards. Before long, the first wave of kids started showing up for tryouts.

Tryouts. Auditions. Sign-ups. This whole process was a little of each, which is why we never called it by one name. Our cast was made up largely of high school kids, and we vetted them for whatever talent they had, which meant listening to a lot of questionably sung madrigals. Our dance captain was a volunteer from the local ballet school; she led aspiring dancers through some simple figures and would let Simon know later which kids had promise. Students who had participated in the past were a shoo-in if they wanted to do the same thing the next year. Adults who wanted to participate had a much easier time of it; we always wanted more adult volunteers, so if you could fill out a form and were even halfway willing to learn an accent, you were in.

I stationed myself at the top of the house in the auditorium, handing forms out to kids and adults alike as they came in. Emily joined me a few minutes after ten.

“There you are,” I said. “I thought you’d come in with Simon.”

She shook her head. “I swung by to pick up Cait.” She indicated down at the front of the auditorium, where I immediately spotted Caitlin by her brown, curly hair—so much like Emily’s you could tell they were related. She leaned against the edge of the stage, talking to Simon. Emily shook her head. “She’s such a suck-up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she’s got a little bit of a crush on Simon—excuse me, on Mr. G—but she won’t admit it to me.”

“Oh, really?”

She shrugged. “I could be wrong. May not be a crush so much as her seeing him as a means to getting into a better college. She’s been all about that college prep this past year.”

“Well, that’s good, right? She’ll be a senior, time to start applying to schools.”

“Oh, absolutely. But soon I’m going to have to break it to her that she won’t be in Simon’s class next year.”

“She won’t?” Simon taught advanced placement English to juniors and seniors. “I thought her grades were good.”

“They’re great. She’s a smart kid. Like her mom.”

“And her aunt.” I nudged her with my shoulder, and Emily smiled in thanks for the compliment.

“But once Simon and I get married this summer, he’ll be family. And he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s favoring her for any reason.”

“Ahhhhh.” I blew out the word as a sigh. “Well, that sucks.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I just need to make her see that there’s an upside to him being family. I foresee a lot of private tutoring sessions at the dining room table.”

I considered that. “Well, if she really has a crush, then she’ll like that more.”

“I can only hope so. She’s been talking about Simon’s college prep English class since, oh, I don’t know, the first day I met Simon. Two years ago.”

“And thought he was a prick.” If Emily thought I was ever going to let her live that down, she was wrong.

She nodded, a rueful smile twisting her face. “Well, he was kind of a prick.”

“Uh-huh.” I handed forms to some more kids who walked through the door, offered one to a mother who put up defensive hands before shaking her head and sitting down in the back of the auditorium. “Good turnout this year.” I still remembered the days when kids were strong-armed into participating; Simon’s big brother had been in charge back then, and he’d been particularly good at begging. These days we had more high school kids volunteering than we could use; we had actually started turning some of them away the past couple years. Amazing. Sean would have been proud. I made a mental note to mention that to Simon later.

Emily scanned the crowd of kids. “Caitlin wants to sing this year, so she’s been practicing.” She threw me a sideways glance. “Didn’t you used to sing? Before your tavern wench days?”

“Sure did. Lots of summers of madrigals.” I smiled at the memory. I’d been active in glee club in high school, so it had been a no-brainer for me to go in that direction. I’d spent my first summers at Faire singing in five-part harmony with four other girls. The Gilded Lilies, we were called, all five of us dressed in identical yellow dresses, like some kind of Renaissance-themed Von Trapp kids. As the older girls aged out and stopped doing Faire, younger girls took their place. I switched over to being a wench sometime during college, and by then the original four girls I’d sung with had