The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre

ROBIN TALLEY is the New York Times bestselling author of the highly acclaimed novels Music from Another World, Pulp, Our Own Private Universe, As I Descended, What We Left Behind and Lies We Tell Ourselves. Her books have won accolades including the Amnesty CILIP Honour and have also been shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal.

She worked in digital communications for LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, educational equity, and other progressive causes for fifteen years before she turned to writing full-time. Robin lives in Washington, DC with her wife and their daughter.

You can find her online at www.robintalley.com or on Twitter @robin_talley.

The Love Curse of Melody McIntyre

Robin Talley

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Robin Talley 2020

Robin Talley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008217259

Version 2020-10-19

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For Darcy.

It’s okay if you don’t love musical theater when you grow up, but

you can never say your moms didn’t try.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue: November

Scene 1—Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

Scene 2—Stage, Beaconville High School Theater

Scene 3—Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

Scene 4—The McIntyre-Perez Living Room

Act 1: February

Scene 1—Beaconville High School Choir Room

Scene 2—Beaconville High School Cafeteria

Scene 3—Hallway, Beaconville High School Performing Arts Wing

Scene 4—Beaconville High School Cafeteria

Scene 5—Beaconville High School Choir Room

Scene 6—The McIntyre-Perez House

Scene 7—The McIntyre-Perez Front Porch

Scene 8—Beaconville High School Choir Room

Scene 9—Beaconville High School Performing Arts Wing

Scene 10—The McIntyre-Perez House

Intermission

Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

Scene Shop, Beaconville High School Performing Arts Wing

Dance Studio, Beaconville High School Performing Arts Wing

Back Bay, Boston

Act 2: April

Scene 1—Beaconville High School Theater

Scene 2—Beaconville High School Cafeteria

Scene 3—The McIntyre-Perez house

Scene 4—Black Box Theater, Beaconville High School Performing Arts Wing

Scene 5—Dance Studio, Beaconville High School Performing Arts Wing

Scene 6—Beaconville High School Gymnasium

Scene 7—Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

Scene 8—Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

Scene 9—Beaconville High School Theater

Scene 10—Beaconville High School Theater

Epilogue: One Year Later

Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

Curtain Call

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

BEACONVILLE HIGH SCHOOL

presents our

spring musical production

Les Misérables

Based on the novel by Victor Hugo

May 1–9, 2020

Beaconville High School Performing Arts Wing

Beaconville High School Theater Rules

Stored on BHS performing arts department shared drive

Created by: Billy Yang, stage manager, class of 2007

Viewable to: All cast, crew, and directors

Editable by: Current SM ONLY

This document was created following our production of the Scottish Play in spring 2007. Henceforth to be referred to as The Production That Must Not Be Named. If we stick to the rules below, hopefully, hopefully, we’ll never have another show like it.

Rule 1:

All standard theater superstitions are to be strictly followed within the performing arts wing. No one can ever whistle, actors may only be told to “break a leg” (never “g**d l**k”), there is to be no giving of flowers to anyone before a performance, etc.

And for God’s sake, no one is EVER to say the real name of the Scottish Play out loud under ANY circumstances. We don’t care if you’re studying Shakespeare for your English APs. We don’t care if you’re trying to come up with a cute ship name for your favorite characters, “Mackenzie” and “Bethany.”

No matter the circumstances, you are NEVER to say M*cb**h out loud. Seriously. We cannot stress the importance of this enough.

Rule 2:

Before rehearsals on a new show begin, all cast and crew must pay tribute to the fire memorial plaque in the theater lobby. What form this tribute takes is up to your team. For our next show, we’ve decided to pay tribute via intense silent prayer to whatever deity each of us may or may not believe in, but anything should do the trick as long as you do it with sufficient gusto.

Rule 3:

A new superstition must be created and strictly adhered to for every play and musical produced on the main stage (see A Brief History of BHS Theater Superstitions). This new superstition will apply to that show and that show only. We highly recommend applying lessons learned from whatever went wrong last time around (which in the case of The Production That Must Not Be Named was everything).

Rule 4:

If any superstition is violated, the offender must perform the appropriate countercurse as soon as possible, or the entire cast and crew will face the consequences.

Rule 5:

The above rules are not to be taken lightly. Trust us, curses aren’t something you want to mess with.

Prologue

November

Scene 1—Tech Booth, Beaconville High School Theater

MINUTES UNTIL OPENING NIGHT CURTAIN CALL: 75

I tap the button, and below me the entire audience draws in a quick, happy breath.

A pale beam of light just appeared at the top of the scaffolding we built on stage left. I hit that cue at the perfect moment, and now the audience is primed and ready. The light was the signal they needed to get invested in this scene, and now they’ll hang on every word while the actors do their actor thing.

Man, I love my job.

“But soft!” Liam calls from downstage center. Another collective happy breath goes up as the audience recognizes the line. “What light through yonder window breaks?”

“Stand by, sound M.” My voice is steady as I call the cue into the headset. Smooth and professional. I’ve only been stage manager for three months, but I’ve already got the smooth-and-professional headset voice down.

My best friend, Dom, nods silently in the seat next to mine, his finger hovering over the go button.

Below us, Liam launches into his first big speech. Up in the booth, we wait.

It’ll take him a while to get to the cue, so I take a moment to squint down at the stage, making sure his doublet’s still intact. One of the sleeves somehow got snagged during the opening fight scene, which Liam isn’t even in, and Rachel spent the whole Lady Capulet scene frantically attacking his shoulder with a needle backstage. If it gets any worse, we’ll have to tell David to give his speech in the next scene really slowly so the costume team will have time to work on it again. Romeo isn’t supposed to look bedraggled yet.

Liam finally gets to the cue line—“Her eye discourses; I will answer it”—and at the exact moment he says it, I say, “Go!”

Dom presses the key right when he’s supposed to, on the g in go. The sound of a dog barking pipes out onto the stage, and the audience members sit up, startled, just like they’re supposed to. The outside world just intruded on Romeo and Juliet’s private moment, reminding them both of what they’re risking if they get caught. The audience is appropriately unsettled.

I want to grin, but I don’t let myself. Dom hasn’t missed a cue all night, and neither have I. It’s still early, though. We’ve got plenty of time to screw things up.

The great dream of my life is that opening night will come off perfectly, but that never happens. It’s the first rule of theater. Besides, we ran into so many crises during the rehearsal process for this show that I stopped counting. Odds are, something’s bound to go wrong between now and curtain call, and it’ll be something worse than a torn doublet. Stage managers can always sense disaster in the making.

“Hey, Mel?” Gabby’s voice chirps in my ear from backstage, and my usual roster of anxieties surges. Did Tybalt’s sword break again? We already had to fix it twice during tech. Or is one of the nervous ensemble freshmen puking in costume? They all know they’re under strict orders when it comes to puking attire.

But then Gabby says, “Should I stay stage left in case Christina needs to look at my script again, or can I check on the Greek chorus?” and I relax.

“Check on the chorus,” I tell her. “Christina has no business looking at your script during a performance anyway. The actors had to be off-book weeks ago. If she forgets a line tonight, she’s on her own.”

Over the headset, Estaban starts singing “On My Own” from Les Mis in a high-pitched voice, and I struggle again not to laugh. Sure, that’s arguably the best song in definitively the best musical ever written, but I can’t risk getting distracted with gorgeous melodies tonight.

“Oh, Romeo, Romeo!” Christina sings out on the stage below, her face settling into the same over-the-top smile she always wears onstage, whether she’s Juliet or Mrs. Potiphar or a backup Delta Nu. “Wherefore art—”

“My cough drops?” Estaban says into the headset. Gabby and the others laugh from backstage, and next to me, Dom chuckles silently into his hand.

This is the first show where Christina’s gotten a lead, and during rehearsals she quickly became infamous with the crew for demanding that cough drops be placed in her palm whenever she held it out. For the first week Gabby actually did it, unwrapping Ricolas and running up to the stage, until our theater teacher, Ms. Marcus, took us both aside. It was Christina’s responsibility to deal with her own cough drops, she told us. And as assistant stage manager, Gabby’s job was to make sure we put on a good show, not to enable the actors’ laziness.

(Okay, I’m paraphrasing Ms. Marcus rather than directly quoting here, but the point is . . . actors. They’re the worst.)

“Ahem.” A throat clears behind me.

When I turn around, Will—Mr. Green, I mean; that’s what I’m supposed to call him at school—frowns from his perch against the back wall of the booth. He’s our technical director, and he doesn’t approve of non-show chatter on headset. I’m the only one who’s really supposed to talk, except when the other crew members need to acknowledge my cues or tell me about some problem backstage.

It’s hard to resist, though. We’ve all seen this show a hundred times in rehearsals, and besides, we just upgraded our headset system. There are a dozen of us on the intercom tonight—all the crew heads and a few of the assistants, plus Gabby and me, plus Will. Basically, everyone I actually like in this school is connected via microphones attached to our heads right now. The urge to go off-topic is strong in us all.

But Will’s right. We need to stay focused. The Greek chorus is about to enter.

“Stand by, sound N,” I say into the mic, nodding at Will so he’ll know I understand.

Dom hovers his finger over the button and wiggles his eyebrows at me. I bite my lip and glare back. Ever since the invited dress rehearsal, he’s been trying to see if he can trick me into laughing during a standby. No one’s allowed to talk on the headsets when we’re in standby, not even me, but Dom says I’m too much of a stickler for the rules.

I haven’t cracked yet, though, and I’m not going to. Sure, this is my first full show as stage manager—and I’m only a junior, which makes me the youngest SM in the history of the Beaconville High School performing arts department, thank you very much—but rules exist for a reason. In a standby, the crew’s attention should be focused on hitting each cue at precisely the right moment. If one person loses track, the whole show could fall apart.

Besides, professionalism is any good stage manager’s number-one character trait. If I can put on an almost-perfect fall play—and, better yet, a totally perfect musical this spring—I’ll be on track to get into my dream stage management program for college, and that’ll set me up to get hired as a professional SM after graduation. First stop, the Beaconville High School theater tech booth, last stop, Broadway.

But only if I can get this right.

“Henceforth I never will be Romeo!” Liam proclaims, throwing his arms up in one of those patented actor flails that make audiences lose their minds.

“Go,” I say into the mic.

Dom presses the button.

This sound cue is short—just a few seconds of recorded music to cover the Greek chorus’s entrance from the wings. Ms. Marcus wanted to bring out actual musicians, but Dr. Benjamin flat-out refused to deal with all the parent permission forms and extra rehearsal scheduling it would’ve taken to get a few horn players onstage for a tiny fragment of a song.

Rachel—who happens to be my girlfriend, in addition to being the best costume crew head our school’s had in years—was glad Dr. Benjamin won that argument. Otherwise she and her team would’ve been stuck sewing three more costumes for just one scene. She wouldn’t have actually minded the sewing part, but band guys at our school are notoriously terrible at standing still and letting themselves be measured, and they’re always cracking vaguely creepy jokes about woodwinds.

As the music winds down, Alejandra and Malik and the rest of the actors in the so-called Greek chorus file on from stage right. The most complicated set of light cues in the entire show is about to start, and my heart’s already racing. But when the music ends, I tap the button for the first cue, right on schedule.

“See, Mel? You got this,” Dom mutters as light slowly fills the stage. He’s keeping his voice down, but his mic is still on, which means the crew can hear him through the headset. Even when he’s being a nice, reassuring friend, which is most of the time, Dom craves an audience. “Nothing can knock you off your game. You’re the cue-calling master.”

“All hail our fearless leader,” Fatima says from backstage.

The others giggle into their headsets. I smile over at Dom and summon up my most relaxed expression. My friends call it my Stage Manager Calm. A good SM is utterly unfazeable. Or pretends to be, at least.

It was the cast’s idea to stage the second half of the balcony scene this way, with a Greek chorus full of Capulets and Montagues trooping out onstage to watch and silently judge while Romeo and Juliet moon over each other. The idea is that they aren’t really there, they’re just hovering on the edges of our heroes’ thoughts, imaginary stand-ins for the risk they’re taking by even having this conversation. While the young lovers are busy declaring passionate, lifelong devotion based on having flirted for approximately thirty seconds at a party, their families are shaking their heads at their inanity, both metaphorically and literally.

The conceptual flaws here are many—for one thing, the whole point of the balcony scene is that it’s an intimate moment between Romeo and Juliet alone, and for another, a Greek chorus by definition can’t be silent—but it’s not my job to point out things like that. My job is to make sure the audience understands what’s happening onstage. And since it’s really hard for a dozen teenage actors to convey mass imaginary silent judgment, we’re doing it with lights.

We came up with a plan for the scene that I now realize is . . . a little on the complicated side. The brightest pools of light will switch back and forth, often, between Liam and Christina at the balcony and their “families” on the opposite side of the stage. The SM always runs the light board on our fall plays, which means it’s up to me to hit the button at precisely the right moment every time to keep that light dancing from one end of the stage to the other while the actors do their thing. Some of the cues are really close together, so it’s going to be tricky, but if I get it right, the audience should be able to follow along. And if I screw up, they’ll be baffled, trying to figure out why all these extra people are hanging out in Juliet’s backyard during the most iconic two-person scene in dramatic history.

Honestly, though—this is why I love technical theater. The actors can prance around reciting iambic pentameter as much as they want, but even they know they’d be helpless without us. Sure, it’s hard—I’m stuck calling cues for the crew all night, plus keeping up with these complicated lighting changes on my own, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m in charge of everything that’s happening.

It’d be easier if I didn’t also have to follow along with every word of the script as they’re saying it, though. I’m the only person in this building who has to know exactly what’s supposed to be happening onstage at every second, even when the actors screw up.

“What’s going on with Christina’s hair?” Fatima asks over the headsets. Now that the Greek chorus is in place, there isn’t much for the run crew to do while this scene is playing out. I’m the only one who has to worry about much of anything right now. Well, me and the cast, I guess. “Did she put on some industrial-strength gel? I can practically see my reflection in it.”

“Don’t even ask,” Shannon says, the eye roll clear in her voice. “I begged Ms. Marcus to let me order her a wig.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and the spring musical will be Tangled.” Dom laughs. “Except I bet she wouldn’t even let you get wigs for that after Midsummer.”

Shannon laughs too. Ms. Marcus declared an official ban on wigs freshman year after the crew had to spend three hours untangling fairy hair from the bedazzled headdresses the parent committee donated in the last week of Midsummer rehearsals.

“Hey, has anyone noticed Malik’s looking particularly luscious in his doublet this evening?” Estaban sounds extremely chipper, even though he really ought to be focused on polishing Liam’s sword. He’s only two scenes away from stabbing Tybalt. “And, sub-question, does anyone know if there’s an update on the heterosexuality situation over there?”

I fight again to keep from laughing—objectifying cast members during a performance is definitely unprofessional—but no one else bothers.

Will hears the chorus of giggles and catches my eye, slashing a hand across his throat. I nod again, and I’m about to tell the others to cut it out when I hear the crash.

The sound is loud in the ear that’s attached to my headset, but I didn’t hear anything from the house. A couple of people in the front rows of the audience jumped, though, so they must’ve heard it too.

“Is everything secure backstage?” I sit up straight in my seat, trying to place the sound and follow along with the script at the same time. It could’ve been a backdrop coming down from the rigging, but I can’t be sure. “Gabby, can you find out what that noise was?”

“Thank you, finding out . . .” Gabby’s trotting footsteps echo through the headset.

“It was the curse!” Estaban stage-whispers.

Dom and I trade eye rolls. I don’t even bother looking back at Will.

“It wasn’t,” I say, genuinely calm this time. “It can’t be—we’ve followed every rule. It was probably the flat from Act One coming loose.”

More shuffling footsteps echo over the headset before Gabby answers. “Yep, Mel’s right. It was the flat.”

“All right,” I say. “Gabby, can you put Michael and Caroline in charge of fixing it, and Bryce, can you guide them through what they need to do?”

“Definitely,” Bryce says from her perch by the fly system backstage. “Sorry, Mel. I don’t know what happened. It worked fine during tech.”

“I told you, it’s the cuuuuuuurrrse!” Estaban says again. Fatima giggles. “It’ll wreak its vengeance by yanking down all our scenery!”