I move around the table, standing opposite her. “Four years,” I bite out, picking up at exactly where we left off the last time the theater director and I had this conversation.

She looks up at me, her short brown hair tucked behind her ears.

I continue. “Nearly four years of set designs and sewing costumes and completing whatever other menial task you asked of me,” I tell her. “I’ve spent more time here than I have with my family.”

“You got a part.”

“The nurse?” I practically spit out.

“You didn’t want Juliet.”

“Romeo wouldn’t have wanted Juliet if he’d spent more than one dance with her before marrying her!”

I’m yelling at a teacher, but I’m around her more than anyone, so I know she’ll let me off the hook like a mom who still loves you even when you fuck up.

I grip the drafting table on both sides, drilling into her eyes with mine. “Mercutio is the most dynamic character in the play. To be able to reimagine him, I mean…”

And I trail off, not seeing the point in saying what I’ve said before. The opportunity to reinvent him would be a dream come true. What the hell could Callum Ames do other than look good in a codpiece? And even that’s debatable.

She rolls her blueprints. “The administration won’t allow a female to play a male’s role.”

“Why not? They spent hundreds of years playing ours.”

She gives me a look like I’m not helping, and then heads over to another work table.

I follow. “He’s a skeptic, he’s crude, he’s hot-headed… He’s the only one with potential for growth.”

She laughs to herself. “A skeptic…”

Yes, a skeptic. I realize that’s not fashionable in a Catholic school, but I think she’s caught on to the fact that if it’s “in” then I’m “out.”

“Please,” I ask, a vulnerability to my tone that I hate hearing from myself.

“No,” she replies.

“I deserve this.”

“No.”

I stand there, watching her as she closes her laptop and gathers her travel mug and bags.

I can’t play the nurse. I don’t care if my part is small. It’s not that.

But I know what I can do, and I’d put in my time. I know what I’m worth.

“Did you even ask them?” I charge.

Does the administration even know the opportunity I’d like?

She stops and looks up, straightening. The soft look in her eyes tells me she wants to make me happy, but…

She won’t fight for me.

“No reimagined sets,” she reiterates. “No reimagined costumes. No Mercutio.”

She leaves, and I stand there, not frozen—just too tired to move. I wish she was telling the truth. I wish the administration really didn’t have money for a Romeo and Juliet makeover, and really did hate the idea of a female Mercutio.

But I know what I know. The problem isn’t my ideas. It’s me. I’ve been the grunt backstage my entire high school career—paying my dues and showing them that no matter how dissenting the piercings on my ears, or how many times my family name is in the Police Beat section of the newspaper—

I want to be here. I will be here every day for as long as she needs me.

I love the theater. I want to be a part of that world on-stage. I’ve put in my time—sewing costumes, building sets, being her right-hand during auditions and rehearsals, and literally being the axis around which everything else spins on performance nights.

You need something pinned? Come here.

You forgot a line? Okay, which part do you play? I know them all.

Dorothy’s almost up and she’s missing? I saw her making out with the Tin Man in the wings. I’ll go grab her.

I’ve pushed a wheelbarrow around in the background of Fiddler on the Roof and almost had actual lines as an understudy for North Winston when she played Miss Scarlet in Clue, but I’m kind of glad that never panned out. I wanted Mrs. White anyway.

Romeo and Juliet is my last chance—was my last chance—to prove what I can do before I’m inevitably rejected by the theater department at Dartmouth.

I hear the heavy stage door slam shut, the last few members of the crew clearing out, the only sound in the entire theater being the ever-present movement of the air conditioning in the ducts above.

My phone is in my bag. I should call Iron to pick me up, but I’m not ready to go home yet.

Heading offstage, I wander down the hall, not really knowing where I’m going until I see the racks of costumes pulled from storage that sit outside the dressing rooms. Repairs need to be made, as well as some altered for the actors wearing them this year, but I can’t help sifting through the clothes, pushing each hanger to the left as I take in the same tired, old shit. It isn’t like my ideas are all that new, either. Romeo and Juliet has been re-adapted several times in West Side Story, China Girl…

Would Leonardo DiCaprio’s version have been number one at the box office opening weekend if he’d been in tights?

Okay, perhaps, but the genius of that film was that it was revamped for a changing audience. Firefights, car chases, rock music, forbidden love… I’m not suggesting much that hasn’t already been done.

I spot a long black coat—Victorian, with a fitted torso and calf-length skirt—mixed in with the Renaissance costumes, and I stop, studying it.

Pulling it off the rack, I hold it up, pause only a moment, and then grab the ruffle on the left shoulder, ripping it off. I do the same to the right side and slide the coat off the hanger, slipping my arms into it. I button it up, the bodice fitting perfectly, and then slip the rubber band off my wrist and pull my hair back into a high ponytail, teasing my hair. I dive into a dressing room and dab on some more eyeliner and dark shadow around my eyes, seeing the scene in my head. New York. A cold night. White snow falling against a black sky.

Prince Paris is in his penthouse somewhere in the city and horns honk in the distance, beyond the park, as Romeo’s hair whips in the wind next to me.

My friend. I walk out to the stage, stand in the middle, and close my eyes.

My best friend. The true other half of his soul.

I swirl around the stage, Mercutio’s famous monologue rolling off my tongue, because I’ve had it memorized for years. Mercutio is large—a one-person party—and she dominates every scene she’s in, the coat spinning with me, my head tipped back, and my eyes still closed as the character slowly swells in my stomach.

“This is the hag,” I go on, feeling my eyes grow wild with fire as I gaze at my friend, “when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.”

I sweat, inhaling and exhaling hard. “This is she.” I shout. “This is she!”

“You’re good,” someone calls out.

I freeze, my breath stopping, and then I whip around, seeing Callum Ames standing behind me. He wears fitted black pants and a dark blue Polo, all of his dusty blond hair flopped to one side.

I narrow my eyes. “Better than you.”

He grins, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I’m white, rich, and male. I’ll succeed no matter what.”