Don't Stop The Music

- twelve -

CHAPTER XII

- part of your world -

[Esther]

As Esther walked through the door leading backstage after another gruelling Biology lesson the next afternoon, Eli greeted her with an enthusiastic grin and a can of blue paint, which she thrust into her hands.

"Backdrop," she said simply, gesturing to the wall at the back of the stage. "We were suppose to have it finished by half term, but..." she looked over at the wall, which remained steadfastly unpainted.

"Half term's in three days," Esther said, slightly warily.

"Yep!" Eli replied brightly. "So work hard this session! Anyway, I gave you the best bit this week: the sky."

Esther smiled. "Is that just a way of telling me I'm shit at painting?"

"No, it's actually really cool. You get to go up on the ladders and stuff..."

It was a full house today: one of the rare days when Anthea didn't have Orchestra rehearsals and Robin and the rest of the tech crew weren't caught up in doing the stuff up in the booths. Eli had hooked her speakers up to her phone and some gentle rock was playing over the chatter. Esther found Robin crouched next to the wall, studying the concept work Eli had sketched for the backgrounds with a half-drying paintbrush tucked behind his ear.

"'Sup," he said.

Esther ran her eyes over the wall. He was working on a crowd scene, and the wall was dotted with paintings of people. They had a sort of cartoonish style to them, but not in a simple way: the kind of thing you could look at and notice how much detail went into them, but looked pretty basic if you just glanced at them. "Did you paint all these?"

He stretched his hands over his head and nodded. "It's taking ages. Have you come to take over?" he added hopefully.

Esther shook her head. "I'm doing the sky," she said.

Robin grinned.

"Don't say anything," Esther warned. Even Eli's quick, rough sketches were more artistically accomplished than anything Esther could hope to achieve.

"Nah, to be honest, I'm jealous," Robin said, innocently. "You're like, Queen of the Sky. All I get are these town scenes, you know?"

Sometime during the painting session, the curtain leading to the stage twitched, and a familiar face popped his head round the side.

"Woah, its busy today," Ezra said. "Or is this some kind of secret backstage party?"

"Backstage is always a party," Eli grinned, brushing her hair out of her face and smudging it with blue paint. "Aren't you meant to be rehearsing?"

"CC had a weird moment of weakness and let us take a half-hour break," Ezra explained, manoeuvring himself awkwardly round the curtain. He was still in crutches, but apparently he'd be out of them before the end of November. "I think some of the others are still in shock..."

Esther smiled. CC had a reputation for being militant about rehearsals, especially when they got closer to the festival date. Sometimes you could hear him barking orders at the cast while they were rehearsing at the same time they were working backstage, which was probably why Eli had started bringing CDs with her to play in the background.

Eli tossed him a paintbrush. "Great. You're hired. The backdrop's not gonna paint itself."

"Is this how the rest of you got involved in this?" Ezra said, hopping over to the wall.