If We Were Villains: A Novel

As soon as the third-years finished Two Gentlemen of Verona, the set was ripped down with unceremonious haste. Three days later, the set for Lear had overtaken the stage, and we walked through the transformed space for the first time. During what normally would have been combat class, we shuffled in through the wings, one by one, numb to the usually exciting prospect of a new set. (Alexander was back from the clinic by then. He brought up the rear—hollow-eyed, stiff and lifeless, a walking cadaver. He looked so utterly broken that I hadn’t yet had the heart—or perhaps the nerve—to confront him, about anything.)

“Here it is,” Camilo said, as he flicked the work lights on. “They’ve really outdone themselves this time.”

For one precious moment, I forgot my tiredness, the weight of constant worry that had settled on my shoulders. It was like wandering into a dreamland.

Taped out on the floor, the set was deceptively simple: a bare stage and the narrow Bridge stretching down the center aisle like a runway. But the artistic design seized the imagination like a drug. An enormous mirror covered every inch of the floor, reflecting the deep shadows beyond the border curtains. Another mirror rose at the upstage wall where the backdrop should have been, tilted just enough that it, too, only reflected black and emptiness—not the audience. Meredith was the first to venture out onto the stage, and I fought a ridiculous urge to grab her arm and pull her back. Her identical twin appeared upside down, reflected in the floor. “God,” she said. “How did they do it?”

“It’s mirrored plexiglass,” Camilo explained, “so it won’t crack and it’s perfectly safe to walk on. The costume crew is fitting special grips to the bottoms of our shoes so we don’t slip.”

She nodded, gazing down a sheer vertical drop to—what? Cautiously, Filippa stepped out to join her. Then Alexander, then Wren, then James. I waited in the wings, uncertain.

“Wow,” Wren said, in a small, awed voice. “What does it look like with the stage lights on?”

“Why don’t I show you?” Camilo said, turning to the monitor in the prompt corner. “Voilà.”

Wren gasped as the lights came up. It wasn’t the hot, sweltering yellow we were used to, but bright dazzling white. We blinked, blinded, until our eyes adjusted. Then Meredith pointed upward and said, “Look!”

Overhead, between the backdrop mirror and the grand drape (where normally there were only a few bare battens and long vines of rope), a million tiny fiber-optic cables hung, burning bright blue like stars. The mirror beneath everyone’s feet had been transformed to an endless night sky.

“Go on,” Camilo said to me. “I promise it’s safe.”

I obediently inched out of the wings and set my foot down, worried it would simply go through the floor and I would plummet. But the mirror was there, deceptively solid. I walked gingerly to center stage where my classmates stood in a tight little group, alternately looking up and down, faces slack with amazement.

“They’ve done actual constellations,” Filippa said. “That’s Draco.” She pointed, and James followed her gaze. I glanced down toward the Bridge, where another line of fiber-optic wires hung from the ceiling in the house.

“Trippy,” Alexander said, softly.

Below us, our reflections stretched down into a starry abyss. My stomach rolled unpleasantly.

“Take your time,” Camilo said. “Walk around. Get used to moving on a three-dimensional floor.”

The others dispersed, drifting quietly away from me, like ripples on the surface of the lake. I realized, with a funny little jolt behind my solar plexus, that this was what it reminded me of: the lake in middle winter, before freezing, the vast black sky reflected like a portal to another universe. I closed my eyes, feeling seasick.

The last few weeks had passed in a whirl and rush, time sometimes moving so slowly it was unbearable, sometimes so fast that it was impossible to catch our breath. We had become a small colony of insomniacs. Outside of classes and rehearsals, Wren rarely left her room, but more often than not the light stayed on all night. Alexander, once released from the hospital, spent two hours every week with a nurse and the school shrink, and lived under threat of expulsion should he put another toe out of line. In the Castle he was constantly observed by Colin and Filippa as he suffered through withdrawal. They suffered with him—watching, worrying, not sleeping. I slept fitfully, at strange hours, and never for very long. When I spent the night downstairs with Meredith she lay cool and quiet beside me, but always kept one hand on my arm or my back or my chest while she read (sometimes for hours without ever turning a page), perhaps just to be certain I was there. If I couldn’t sleep in one room, I crept to the other. James was a fickle companion. Sometimes we lay on our opposite beds in companionable quiet. Sometimes he tossed and muttered in his sleep. Other nights, when he thought I was already dreaming, he slid out of bed, took his coat and shoes, and disappeared into the dark outside. I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.

I still saw Richard, almost nightly, more often than not in the undercroft. Blood leaked out from underneath the locker door, and when I opened it I found him crushed inside, red dripping from his nose and eyes and mouth. But he was no longer the only player in my oneiric repertory; Meredith and James had both joined the company, cast sometimes as my lovers, sometimes my enemies, sometimes in scenes so chaotic that I couldn’t tell which. Worst of all, sometimes they clashed with each other and seemed not to see me at all. In my subconscious dramas they, like violence and intimacy, became somehow interchangeable. More than once I woke with a guilty start, unable to remember which bedroom I was in, who else’s breath stirred softly in the silence.

I opened my eyes, and my own vertiginous reflection stared up at me. My cheeks were gaunt, my skin blotchy with fading bruises. I lifted my head, looked from one friend to another. Alexander had made his way to the end of the Bridge and sat staring out at the empty house. Meredith stood at the very edge of the stage, looking down into the orchestra pit, like a jumper contemplating suicide. Wren, a few paces behind her, put one foot carefully in front of the other, arms outstretched, tightrope walking. Filippa had retreated to the left wing; her face was turned up toward Camilo, who had leaned close to whisper something without interrupting the lull.

I found James standing against the backdrop, one arm outstretched, palm to palm with his own reflection, his eyes slate blue in the cold cosmic light.

I shifted and my shoes squeaked on the mirror. James turned and caught my eye. But I stayed where I was, afraid to move toward him, afraid I might lose my footing on solid ground, detach from what had anchored me before and drift out into the void of space—a vagabond, wandering moon.