The theater smelled of hot rubber, lemon oil, and an old audience's perfume that seemed to have soaked into the velvet seats. Cass Moreno moved through that smell like someone returning to a familiar bone — she knew where the warm spots were on the catwalk, which ladder rung clicked a little loose, which gel pouch had that stubborn streak of blue she'd been meaning to clean for months. Her hands were already sticky with grease and cue tape; she liked that feeling the way other people liked citrus soap, as proof that she'd been somewhere and had done something with her hands.
She hoisted a lantern and climbed, the ladder protesting under her weight in a voice as tired as her own. Up there, with the house lights off and the emergency exit sign humming, the world compressed to the small circle of light beneath her palms and the soft breathing of the rigging. She worked in a rhythm that occupied her better than any playlist: loosen, angle, test, tighten, walk back, inhale. She tested a new shutter cut and watched the beam smooth across the dusty dust motes like a river finding its bed. In the dark, her signature cue felt like an answer she hadn't yet given herself aloud.
A tiny theater cat named Sprocket blinked at her from the rung below as if to check attendance. He had a preference for sitting on soundboards and for pretending to be an owl. "You're being dramatic, as always," Cass told him, and he flicked his tail in what she chose to interpret as amusement.
The building wasn't just a place to stash equipment. It held other people's rituals. Outside, on Maple Street, the bakery's neon sign — Mrs. Adebayo's — still had a half-lit O blinking slowly, like a tired eye. The baker left cinnamon rolls in a tin by the stage door occasionally, and for reasons Cass never questioned the theater's potluck on the first Sunday of the month always featured at least one dish with sunflower seeds. Tonight there was no potluck, only the quiet and the smell of rain hanging like a promise over the windows.
Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She fumbled it out with grease on her fingers and read the message before she had shampooed off the theater: a push from the apprenticeship portal reminding her the deadline was in twelve days. She swallowed hard and then scrolled through an older message from Eli, the student director, sent that afternoon — "Can you make something that knocks people's socks off? Think big, Cass. Think lights that make them gasp." His optimism always looked like a dare on the screen.
Cass smiled a small, private smile. She had designs in her head that could make people gasp — a seam of light that would corral an actor into a corner of the stage and then open like a slow iris. It was an idea she kept in a little pocket in her mind where she polished it with a rag. If she could embed that cue into a show and document it, she could send footage and a portfolio link and maybe that would be the thing that finally convinced someone to take a chance on her.
She took the lantern down and began to set pen marks on the gobo boxes, fingers moving quick and assured. A streetlight sputtered outside and the rain started to thread down the windows, sending little fingers of water across the glass. The theater felt suspended between a storm and a promise: there was the possibility of something big and the practical wane of old circuits and tired crews. For the first time that night the idea of being both the person who made light and the person who kept it running felt like a choice instead of a fallback.
When she heard a soft step behind her, she didn't jump. She'd expected more trespassers than friends at this hour. Rowan's face appeared under the lip of the catwalk like a comic tab peering out from a book. "Are you hoarding the best gels again?" he called, voice already joking to keep things light.
"They're experimental," Cass said, and then added, because she couldn't resist: "and technically illegal in four states."
Rowan snorted. He was seventeen, barely, with a mop of hair that refused to do anything the way hair in promotional photos of successful people did. He held a roll of gaffer tape like a talisman. "You know, when I was little I thought gaffer tape fixed everything. I put it on my bike once and it made it totally invincible until the chain fell off."
Cass laughed, the sound expanding into the empty wings. It wasn't a performance-worthy laugh — it was small, human, shared. And for a second the theater felt less like a refuge she hid in and more like a place where people survived nights together.