(Reese)
I stepped off the runway and walked back through the curtain.
Backstage had gotten louder in the few minutes I'd been gone. More voices, more movement, the energy that built in the hours before a show when everything that could be prepared had been prepared and the only thing left was waiting for the moment to arrive.
Simone fell into step beside me.
"First guest arrivals in two hours," she said.
"I know."
"Press check in forty five minutes."
"I know that too."
She looked at me sideways. "You're calm."
"I'm terrified," I said. "There's a difference."
She laughed. It was a real one, the kind that only came out when she wasn't thinking about the clipboard in her hand.
"You built this," she said. Not the way people said it to be encouraging. The way someone said it when she
