Page 3 of In What World

“We really might,” I say. It wouldn’t be a Dallas Winthrop production if someone wasn’t furious about his decisions. He’s made it a tradition to keep the spring musical a secret until the December before it will open, and because he has a penchant for choosing risky shows, there are often some overzealous parents eager to discuss the show’s subject matter with us.

“I can wait,” Alice tells me. “I’m sure I’ll still be reading these essays. Remind me why I asked them to write these by hand?”

“So you wouldn’t have to suffer through reading twenty papers written by AI,” I remind her.

“That’s right. Down with the evil robots. They’ll never take our souls. Well, break a leg. They’re going to love the play you picked.”

“It’s a musical, dear,” Dallas tells her.

“They’re going to love the musical,” Alice corrects.

As we continue down the hallway, Dallas puts his arm around me, tilting his head toward mine. He doesn’t like Alice for me. He’s never said it, and I’ve never dared to ask, but two decades in his presence have made me acutely aware of his teaching style. He isn’t trying to make Alice learn proper theater etiquette. Very few members of our faculty know or remember it, and Dallas doesn’t make a spectacle of correcting anyone else by pretending to be mortally wounded. He’s trying to emphasize how wrong Alice is for me by finding ways to point out our fatal incompatibilities—me, a lifelong theater nerd, dating a woman who can’t remember to say “Break a leg” even though she went to this very high school and has had plenty of continued exposure to the arts, thanks to Dallas and me.

It’s just not the lens through which she views the world, I always want to argue.She’s still a creative like you and I, but she sees things through the eyes of a designer, not a storyteller!Talk to her about our costumes, or our set! You’ll get it then.

That’s me fighting the Dallas who lives only in my mind. He accepts my one-sided arguments with no pushback. The real Dallas would surely make some kind of devastating-yet-true observation in return that I’d never be able to forget. Which is why I’ll never actually bring it up.

“Did you hear the news?” real Dallas asks.

Closer to the auditorium, he’s hung up three gigantic posters of Priscilla Covington-French like championship banners. Or, excuse me, they are ofCilla Cove, as she is professionally known, supporting cast member on the critically acclaimed, widely beloved TV medical dramaHeartbeats.

I give Dallas a wry glare, then look to Cilla’s face the way a person might examine their own reflection, scouring her every nonexistent pore for clues as to how she ended up near the top of a career she swore she didn’t want to pursue.

Every single school day for the last few years, I’ve had to pass by her gigantic twinkling eyes and cloyingly sincere smile. She always manages to look like she’s recently finished giggling, perpetually in on a secret you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to decode.

“I don’t think anyone on staff missed the three separate emails you sent on the matter,” I say to Dallas.

“Was it really three? My keyboard’s been sticking.” He smiles. “Maybe I should send another? Just to apologize for the duplicates. And to make sure everyone read what the other emails said.”

“Should we go ahead and print flyers, too, for anyone who might want to cut down on their screen time?” I ask. “What’s the loss of a tree or two if it means celebrating the success of Cilla Cove?”

“I like the way you think,” he says.

Dallas has every right to be proud of Cilla, who secured her first-ever Golden Globe nomination this morning for her work on the final season ofHeartbeats. After all, it was Dallas who plucked her out of his freshman English class and begged her to audition for the fall play. She owes her success to him in a real way.

“It’s very cool,” I continue, knowing he expects more from me and incapable of stopping myself from giving it, no matter how heavy my tongue is in my mouth. “I’m sure she’s excited.”

“There’s a lot to celebrate.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and leads us farther down the hall. “You’ve both gone on to do great things.”

“Oh yes,” I say. “My own Globe nomination is right around the corner. Just as soon as I finish assistant-directing another high school musical with you.”

“Soon you’ll bedirecting,” he reminds me. “And I already know you’ll lead these kids to big things. I see Jimmy Awards every single year. A whole roster of award winners.”

“Billy Larsen is already in line for his future Tony as we speak,” I joke.

“You never know,” Dallas says. “No one’s life ever works out the way they expect it will.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” I reply.

Since I started teaching at WRHS, Dallas and I have put up seventeen shows together—nine fall plays and eight spring musicals, with our ninth and final spring coproduction on the horizon. When he retires at the end of the school year, what’s his will become mine alone. It’s a legacy so legendary that we still get letters and emails from alumni, thanking him for the way he dared to treat high school theater as more than child’s play. As the head of our drama department, he’s turned hundreds of self-conscious teens into confident performers—me included—and he’s done it by pushing boundaries with his material and casting choices, never boxed in by gender binaries, or text restrictions, or being located in Garden Meadows of all places. How else would I have been cast as Mark inRENTmy senior year, with Cilla playing Roger? Dallas will leave massiveshoes to fill. Shoes I’ve spent almost half of my life trying to mold to my own unruly feet.

Framing both sides of the main auditorium entrance are smaller black-and-white pictures of every production Dallas has ever staged here, dating all the way back to his first year of teaching in 1994. Once a show closes, it’s tradition to hang up an image from a key scene. Dallas chooses which pictures make it onto this coveted wall, and I’ve been lucky enough to star in my fair share of photos from my time as a student. Knowing its location by heart, my eyes find the shot of Cilla and me from our senior year. In the picture, I’m leaning toward Cilla with an eyebrow raised. Her back is arched so much she’s almost doing a bridge. We’re scowling at each other.

Except for Cilla, I say to the Dallas in my mind.She got everything you always knew she would.

Dallas and I open the auditorium doors together and walk up the carpeted aisle to the soundtrack of our students’ hushed anticipation. I can still remember the weight of this moment—squirming in my seat as I mentally slotted myself into a handful of different roles, knowing Dallas would be thinking outside the box for whatever show he had chosen. Would I be Nancy inOliver!? Or maybe Bill Sikes? Harold Hill inThe Music Man? Gaston inBeauty and the Beast?

When I’m inside this auditorium, I still believe in the person I thought I’d one day become. She exists only here, and I walk her out like an old dog, letting her spend a few hours each day basking under the warmth of the stage lights. It’s nice to spend time with her, to feel my cheeks pull back into a wide, sincere smile, to get excited to play my role in creating unforgettable show memories for my students.