The gaffer tape bites into my palms as I yank another cable across the corridor, and all I can think is we're already behind.
"Left, not right," I mutter at the cable, because apparently I've reached the point of arguing with inanimate objects.
The hallway outside the music room is a bottleneck of chaos—sound bleeding from the main stage, the muffled thump of bass, someone's laughter ricocheting off lockers. Warm air, sweat, floor wax, and that weird metallic tang of stage lights being cranked up for hours. Every few seconds, somebody brushes past me with a costume on a hanger or a drum case that's somehow exactly in my way.
"Aanya, you're strangling my ankles," Noah calls from behind, half-laughing, half-annoyed.
I glance back. He's balancing his guitar case and a keyboard stand, trying not to trip over the cable I'm dragging.
"Then step higher," I say. "It's called lifting your feet. Revolutionary concept."
He snorts, but he adjusts course. The cable scrapes over the linoleum, leaving a faint black line that the janitor will hate me for tomorrow. Add it to the list of problems Future Aanya will apologize for.
"Where do you want this to go?" Noah lifts the end of the cable like it's a dead snake.
"Spare amp in the music room," I say. "Backup feed from there to the side stage. If your band's bassist decides to have a meltdown, you're still wired."
"You say that like it hasn't happened before." He shakes his head, but there's a little grateful tilt to his mouth. "You're terrifying, you know that?"
"I try," I say, even though my stomach is a knot. Terrifying is better than useless.
The music room door looms just ahead, chipped paint around the handle, "Authorized Personnel Only" sign slightly crooked. Someone's taped a hand-lettered "GREEN ROOM" sheet over it in neon marker, the tape corners already peeling from the humidity.
I juggle the coil of cable on one shoulder and dig in my hoodie pocket for the keycard Lena signed out for me earlier. It takes me three tries to get the lanyard untangled from my earbuds, and the plastic card smacks my knuckles on the way out.
Reader beep. Tiny red light. Nothing.
"Come on," I hiss under my breath, swiping again, slower.
This time the light flips green and the lock gives that soft click I've learned to love and hate in equal measure. The door doesn't actually move until I lean my shoulder into it; the stopper must be jammed. When it finally swings inward, a slice of cooler, instrument-scented air brushes my face—varnish and dust and the faint sweetness of rosin.
"See?" I tell Noah. "Terrifying and efficient."
He dips his head in mock bow as he squeezes past me into the room. "All hail the queen of cables."
I roll my eyes, but the words land like a little anchor in my chest. If I keep everything moving, nothing can collapse. That's the deal I've made with myself tonight.
My phone buzzes in my other pocket: three quick vibrations in a row. Rhea's group chat: FESTIVAL OR DIE.
Rhea: Aanya where are youuuu
Rhea: Tell me the schedule is taped up by the main doors
Rhea: Please say yes or I will combust in front of the jazz band
I bite the inside of my cheek. Right. The welcome-board schedule. The one I printed an hour ago and absolutely did not tape up because the printer jammed and then the sound guy had a meltdown and—
"Everything okay?" Noah's voice floats out from behind a stack of chairs. He's already half in the corner, setting up the backup amp like he lives here.
"Yeah," I say automatically. "Just Rhea being Rhea."
He laughs softly. "So: panicking in bullet points?"
"Exactly."
I thumb a quick reply.
Aanya: Almost done back hall. Schedule going up in 5. Promise.
Rhea: BLESS YOU
Rhea: Also if you see my green notebook pls grab it
Rhea: The one with the stickers not the one with the tabs
I can practically hear her clipped, breathless voice in the messages. The image of her flashes in my head: hair yanked into a messy bun with two pencils stuck through it, lanyard jangling, lips moving as she counts under her breath, that little crease between her eyebrows when something isn't where it's supposed to be.
"Do you need help?" I type, then delete it. She'll say no. She always says no, and then stays up an extra three hours alone fixing whatever broke.
The edge of the keycard digs into my palm. My job is cables and doors and making sure other people's disasters don't show onstage. Her job is everything else.
I step fully into the music room and nudge the door open wider with my foot, leaving it ajar. Instruments are everywhere: stands, mic poles, a stray xylophone. Someone's abandoned water bottle sweats a ring onto the piano bench.
"Use the outlet under the whiteboard," I tell Noah. "It's already rated for the amp. And don't stack anything on the extension box or the fire marshal will spontaneously appear and murder us."
"Noted," he says. "You okay to tape this down?"
"Yeah. I've got it." I squat, ripping strips of gaffer tape with my teeth and securing the cable at rough intervals across the threshold, flattening it so nobody will trip.
My head is full of ticking boxes. Main doors schedule. Side-stage call times. Volunteer check-in sheets. The laminated emergency map Lena printed that keeps disappearing because people keep borrowing the tape.
I can feel the festival pressing in from all sides, like the building is taking a breath it hasn't exhaled yet.
By the time I'm done, my knees pop when I stand. I shake out my fingers, feel the tacky residue from the tape, wipe it absently on my jeans. The door is still half-open, the corridor noise bleeding in.
"Don't lock yourself in," I tell Noah. "If that door closes all the way, it defaults to locked. You'll have to text me to let you out."
"Then don't go too far," he says, half teasing. "My solo depends on you."
"You'll live if you miss fifteen seconds of dramatic feedback," I say, but there's a thread of something tight in my chest at the idea of leaving anyone trapped behind a closed door tonight. I wedge a folded piece of cardboard from an old amp box under the bottom corner, just in case. The wood frame creaks but holds.
"There," I say. "Manual insurance."
"You're a control freak," Noah says.
"Thank you," I answer, and mean it.
Out in the hallway again, the noise slams into me. Someone's doing a vocal warm-up that sounds like a dying bird. Distantly, the main stage emcee's mic squeals and cuts out, followed by a chorus of groans.
Maya flashes past in a whirl of sequins and hair spray, one arm hooked through her dance partner's, the other clutching a makeup brush.
"Aanya!" she sings, walking backward for three dangerous steps. "Tell me the stage floor isn't sticky. I swear if I land a split in someone's spilled soda—"
"I told the custodial guys to do one more mop at six-thirty," I say. "If you faceplant, it won't be my fault."
"So half your fault, got it," she calls, spinning away toward the wings.
I check my watch. 6:54 p.m.
Six minutes until doors. Thirty-six until the "official" window everyone keeps talking about in planning meetings. The hour everything has to fit into, to the minute, because the principal is obsessed with schedules and Lena is obsessed with funding reports and Rhea is obsessed with not disappointing anyone.
My stomach does a little flip. One hour is not a lot. One hour is nothing.
I pivot toward the main entrance, where the big glass doors show twilight pooling in the parking lot. The welcome-board easel is propped beside them, still blank except for a smudge of dry-erase marker.
"Aanya!" another voice calls.
Rhea this time. I don't see her at first, just hear the clipped edges of her words slicing through the muddle. Then she's there, weaving through a cluster of freshmen in matching choir T-shirts, her lanyard of keys and badges bouncing against her chest. A sheaf of papers is clamped under her arm, and her green notebook—the one with the peeling constellation stickers—is open in her hand as she writes while walking.
"Do you sleep?" I ask as she reaches me. "Like, ever?"
"Define sleep," she says, slightly breathless, then finally looks up and really sees me. Her eyes soften for half a second. "You okay?"
"Fine," I lie. "Cable's in, backup amp's live, Noah's setting levels. I'm about to do the door board before you combust."
Her shoulders visibly drop a few millimeters. "You are my favorite human."
She snaps the notebook shut and shoves it into her tote, ends of pages fluttering. A strip of neon sticky note peeks out from the top, a numbered list scrawled on it in her tiny handwriting.
"You sure you don't want someone else to—"
"I don't have time to redistribute workload right now," she says, too fast. "Also they'd mess it up." Then, softer: "Sorry. That sounded horrible. I trust you, okay? Just—please put the jazz band after the spoken word, not before. They still haven't tuned."
"Already did," I say, even though I hadn't. I flip the marker cap off with my thumb, write quickly in big block letters across the whiteboard:
7:30 Jazz Ensemble
7:45 Spoken Word
8:00 Rhea Patel – Original Set
My hand hesitates over her name. It looks too big, too final, in that slot.
"Slide me later if you have to," she says, watching my writing. "If something overruns. Just don't cut the juniors' drama piece; they'll mutiny."
"Got it," I say, adding a little star next to her line without really thinking about it.
She notices. Of course she does. "That makes it seem like I'm special," she says, trying for lightness.
"You are special," I say, and then we both freeze for a beat because I said it way more seriously than I meant to.
Her eyes flick away and back, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Flattery noted," she says. "Use that power on the principal if the microphones die, please."
"I'm not a miracle worker," I say.
Her gaze skims the board again, then my face. For a second, something else sits behind her eyes—like she's about to say something that isn't about the schedule or the stage or anyone else's performance.
"Hey," she starts. "After this—can we—"
A burst of feedback from the main stage cuts her off, a piercing squeal that makes both of us flinch. Over it, the vice principal's voice booms, "We open doors in five minutes, people, let's move!"
Rhea's phone buzzes viciously on her lanyard. She makes a face and glances at the screen. "Of course," she mutters. "They need me at the ticket table. Again."
She looks back at me, that half-formed sentence still hanging between us.
"Later," she says. "I'll catch you near the music room before my set, okay?"
"Okay," I say, even though a tiny knot of dread forms under my breastbone for no logical reason. "I'll be around."
"Promise?" she asks, mock-serious.
I hold up three fingers. "On my terrifying control-freak honor."
She laughs, the sound short and bright, and then she's gone, already turning, already talking into her phone as she strides toward the lobby. Her bun lists to one side, pencils threatening to fall out, but they don't. She's held together by sheer velocity.
I stare at the board for a second longer, then cap the marker and step back. It's not perfect. The margins are crooked. My handwriting slants more than usual. But it's up, and parents are already lining up outside, faces pressed to the glass.
My pulse won't slow.
I head back toward the rear corridor, where the music room and side stage are. As I turn the corner, I almost trip over the edge of that same cable, now neatly taped down. The cardboard wedge is still under the music-room door, keeping it half-open like I left it.
Someone's added something, though.
There's a small rectangle of paper taped just below the "GREEN ROOM" sign, center, where the chipped paint makes a little white halo around the tape.
My name is on it.
AANYA, in Rhea's neat, all-caps handwriting.
I glance up and down the hallway. No one's paying attention to me. A couple of choir kids are arguing softly by the water fountain. Iris is halfway up a ladder near the side stage, fiddling with a gel on a spotlight, her ponytail swinging with each adjustment.
I peel the note off the door. The tape gives with a soft, sticky sound. My fingers feel clumsier than they should.
Inside, the paper is folded once.
For a second, my brain whispers, It's nothing. Instructions. A song change. Another to-do list.
But my thumb hesitates on the crease anyway.
Finally, I unfold it.
Aanya—
Need to talk to you. Privately. It's important.
Music room before my set? Don't tell anyone.
—R
My heart gives one hard thump, like it's hit a wall mid-beat.
Privately. Don't tell anyone.
I look up at the half-open door, at the thin slice of dim room beyond, guitars and stands a blur in the gloom.
Somewhere down the hall, the emcee's voice booms again, muffled through the walls: "Welcome to Westbridge's annual Culture Night—"
I should be moving. There are still chairs to straighten, a volunteer to chase, a lighting cue sheet to drop off. Instead I stand there, her note soft between my fingers, the ink indented just enough that I can feel the grooves of her letters.
Behind me, footsteps approach. I shove the paper into the pocket of my hoodie just as a shadow lengthens beside me.
"Aanya." Mr. Darrow, the faculty advisor, appears at my elbow, clipboard in hand. He nods toward the music room. "Rhea in there? I need her to sign off on the fire route one more time."
My mouth opens before my brain catches up.
"No," I hear myself say. "She… just left."
And even as the words slip out, calm and easy, a tiny, sharp thought lodges itself in the back of my mind:
I don't actually know if that's true.