7:00 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
The cymbals crash before I'm ready.
Sound slams through the auditorium—drums, bass, a guitar that's slightly sharp—and the whole stage shudders under my sneakers. For a second I just stand there, gripping my clipboard so hard the edge bites into my palm, and let the noise roll over me.
Okay. Breathe. This is good. Loud is good. Loud means nobody hears anything they're not supposed to.
"Singh, you're in the way," someone yells from the lighting rig.
I jolt left automatically, out of the beam of a moving spotlight. The cone of white swings down and sweeps the front rows, catching dust in the air like snow in a blizzard. The seats are half‑empty for now—parents and kids trickling in, plastic programs crackling, the smell of popcorn already fighting with sweat and hot metal from the stage lights.
I stare at my schedule. 7:05 p.m. – junior band soundcheck. 7:10 – emcee intro. 7:15 – opening contemporary dance. Everything is highlighted, underlined, annotated in Rhea's neat, blocky handwriting.
Was.
I swallow, blink hard, and the word smears in my head. The ink on the page doesn't smudge. Rhea's notes never smudge. She presses too hard, the ballpoint cutting a faint groove in the paper. Permanent. Like she thought she could keep this whole night pinned down with bullet points and arrows.
"Hey, Aanya!" Eli's voice slices through the music. "House lights are flickering again. Is that you or God punishing us?"
I turn toward the back of the auditorium. Eli is halfway up the aisle, a lanyard swinging against his hoodie, grinning like this is all one long inside joke. Behind him, clusters of students in festival T‑shirts drift between rows, shouting to each other over the band.
"It's the dimmer board," I shout back. "Tell Aman not to ride the faders so hard or he'll blow them."
"You tell him," Eli calls, already pivoting to greet a group of sophomores. "You're the one he listens to."
I check the time on my phone. 7:03 p.m.
Of course the dimmers are freaking out now. Of course the one thing I thought we'd over‑prepared is acting up.
I head for the sound booth at the back, weaving through legs of mic stands and bundles of taped‑down cable. A dancer in sequins almost collides with me; I mutter an apology, then immediately hate myself for it. It's not my fault she's stretching across the wings like it's her private mirror.
The music cuts abruptly with a squeal of feedback. The sudden silence is worse than the noise; it feels wrong, like the air's been vacuumed out.
Aman pops up from behind the mixing console, yanking his headset off one ear. "Relax," he says when he sees my face. "Just a test. I'm trying to get rid of that hum on channel four."
"You're making the house lights flutter," I say. "People will think we're doing a séance."
"Could be on theme." He smirks. "Haunted high school, tragic vocalist—"
"Don't," I snap.
The word comes out sharper than I mean it to. The space behind my ribs feels suddenly hollow, like someone kicked out a load‑bearing wall.
Aman's smile dies. He looks away first. "Sorry."
I stare at his hands instead of his face. They're steady on the sliders, fingertips resting on the plastic caps like he's playing an instrument only he can hear.
He didn't mean anything. Nobody means anything tonight. That's the problem.
"It's fine," I lie. "Just—keep the test blackouts to what we programmed, okay? No improvising."
He rolls his eyes but nods. "Yes, ma'am. Scheduled blackout at seven‑thirty on the dot, thirty seconds, then back up. I know the plan. Rhea drilled it into me."
The plan. Rhea's plan. The one she walked me through three times in this very booth, her pen tapping against the console while she talked.
I hear her voice in my head—We need the blackout to land exactly with the drop, or the reveal looks sloppy, Aanya, can you please tell Aman that—and for a second I'm sure if I turn around she'll be there, waving a stack of programs like a conductor's baton.
She isn't. Obviously.
My eyes blur again. I blink it away, hard enough that the overhead lights smear into starbursts.
You don't get to fall apart, I tell myself. Not tonight. Not in here.
"Where's your clipboard?" Aman asks, flicking a couple of switches. His tone has softened; he only pulls out sarcasm when he feels safe.
I lift the board in answer. Rhea's handwriting covers the top sheet, a grid of time slots and color‑coded acts. In the margin, she's doodled tiny music notes and a cat face with one ear bigger than the other. She did that everywhere. Even on the emergency exit checklists.
"She'd kill you for using it as a shield," Aman says quietly. "You know that, right?"
"I know," I say. My voice comes out steady, which feels like betrayal.
A little icon next to 7:10 p.m. catches my eye. Rhea's shorthand: "M – script" with a squiggle that means "confirm with Maya."
I flip the board over, check the back page. Nothing. Just a faint imprint of Rhea's last note to me from the rehearsal two days before she died: A. remind me to fix the door magnet in the music room. sticks.
I run my thumb along the groove the pen left. I remember her frowning at the door, her palm pressed against the metal as it refused to catch properly. "If it slams on someone during the show, we're dead," she'd said, laughing at her own choice of word.
We fixed it. Or—she said we did. I watched her wedge a folded bit of tape into the frame, watched the magnet click cleanly on the next try. We were proud of ourselves, like we'd saved the festival from catastrophe.
That was before.
"Aanya?" Aman nudges my elbow. "You good?"
I nod too quickly. "I have to check on Maya's script. Don't black anything out without warning me."
"Yes, boss." He salutes. "I'll be a good boy. For Rhea."
The way he says her name makes my chest tighten. I turn away before that feeling can spread to my face.
Backstage, the world shifts from open space to compressed chaos. Fabric curtains swallow the auditorium, and the noise changes—muffled drums, kids shouting over the monitor mix, the hiss of the fog machine ramping up in the wings. The floor is a grid of gaffer‑tape lines and scuff marks, the air thick with hairspray and the tang of paint from the mural Iris has been working on all week.
I nearly trip over a coil of cable. "Seriously?" Iris snaps, yanking it out of my path at the last second. There's green paint on her fingers and a smudge on her cheek that looks like a bruise in the low light.
"Sorry," I say again. Always sorry. "Have you seen Maya?"
"She was with Lena a minute ago. Student council table." Iris jerks her chin toward the side corridor, then squints at me. "You look like you're about to puke."
"Festival manager chic," I say. "New trend."
Her mouth twitches. It doesn't become a smile.
The corridor to the student council office is narrower, fluorescent‑bright, and somehow quieter despite the echoing footsteps and murmur of voices bleeding through the walls. White paper signs are taped everywhere—DRESSING ROOMS →, CHOIR HOLDING, TECH ONLY. Rhea's handwriting again, with Lena's tidier lines underneath where she corrected spelling and added arrows.
I push open the office door with my shoulder.
Inside, Maya is half‑perched on a desk, swinging one leg, script in hand. Lena stands beside the whiteboard, erasing a line of numbers with the edge of her sleeve. They both look up when I enter.
"There she is," Maya says, relief flooding her voice so quickly it's almost accusation. Her dark hair is braided back tight for the dance, glitter dusted across her collarbones. "Tell me you have the updated order. They just told me the choir wants to swap slots because their pianist is late."
"No," Lena says at the same time. "We already approved the schedule. We can't keep moving people around; tech will kill us."
Their eyes land on my clipboard like it's a weapon I've brought into the room.
I close the door behind me. The latch clicks louder than it should.
"Choir can't move," I say, flipping to the second page. "If they go later, they run over the principal's speech. And we can't move the blackout cue; Aman's already programmed it."
"So what, we tell them to suck it up?" Maya asks. "Great way to keep people from murdering us in the parking lot."
Murder. The word scrapes down my spine. I feel my fingers tighten on the board again.
"It's a school festival, not Coachella," Lena says. She sounds tired, not sharp—like she hasn't slept properly since the funeral. I know that feeling. I wore it to class all week. "They can adjust. We're locking the schedule now."
She caps the whiteboard marker with finality.
Maya groans and flops back dramatically on the desk, holding the script over her face. "Fine. martyr me. Where's my cue card, then? Rhea promised she'd print the revised intro."
"She did," I say. "It's in the music room. She… left it there. I'll grab it before seven‑ten."
All three of us go still for a fraction of a second. The music room. Rhea. Left.
I hear the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights, the muffled thud of bass through the wall. Lena is the first to move; she picks up a stack of laminated passes and straightens them even though they're already aligned.
"You don't have to go in there alone," Maya says. Her voice is softer, the bravado drained out. "I can—"
"I'm not scared of a room," I say. It comes out too fast, too flat.
But I am. Not of the room, exactly. Of the moment I step inside and it's just me and the piano and the faint phantom of Rhea's perfume clinging to the curtains, and the memory of the last time.
You weren't there, I remind myself. You only saw the aftermath. The open door. The crowd. The paramedics.
Still.
"You're sure the script's in there?" Lena asks. "I thought the last version was on her laptop."
"There's a printed copy," I say. I don't add: I know because I watched her tuck it into the blue folder on the piano, right before—
Right before.
I force my shoulders down. "I'll get it. You just—don't move anything else, okay? We can't afford another change."
"That's what Rhea used to say," Lena murmurs.
I pretend I don't hear the past tense.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I glance at the screen: 7:09 p.m. A text from Mom—Send pic when you go on stage! So proud of you beta ❤️—stared at for half a second before I lock it again.
"I should go," I say. "Maya, be at stage right at seven‑ten. Lena, can you double‑check the key sign‑out sheet? Security's already twitchy about people wandering."
"On it," Lena says. She reaches for the clipboard automatically. "Let me note—"
"I've got it," I say, drawing it back before I can stop myself.
Her eyebrows lift. "Okay. I wasn't going to eat it."
"I just—need it," I say. I don't know why my pulse has spiked.
Because it's Rhea's handwriting. Because it's the last thing of hers I have that isn't zipped into an evidence bag somewhere. Because part of me is sure if I let go of this, the festival will spin apart and take us with it.
Maya watches me with a gaze that's too perceptive for my comfort. "You're doing too much," she says quietly. "You know that, right?"
"I promised her it would run on time," I say. "The least we can do is not screw up the one night she—"
My throat closes around the word had.
Maya slides off the desk, script rustling in her hand. She hesitates, like she wants to reach out, then thinks better of it. "Okay. Then don't screw it up," she says, aiming for lightness and missing by a mile. "Go get my cue card, Singh. You're the only one Rhea trusted with her chaos."
I nod, because if I open my mouth now something might break.
The corridor back to backstage feels longer this time. I pass a cluster of freshmen trying to take a group selfie under a string of fairy lights, Eli photobombing them with a peace sign. He catches my eye and mouths, You good? I flash a thumbs‑up I don't feel and keep walking.
The closer I get to the music room, the colder the air feels. It's stupid; the AC is broken in this wing and everyone complains about how stuffy it is during rehearsals, but my arms pebble anyway.
The door is at the end of the corridor, plain and beige, the word MUSIC cut out in black vinyl letters. Someone—probably Rhea—stuck tiny silver stars around the sign months ago. One has fallen off, leaving a faint, clean square on the paint where the surrounding grubby fingerprints don't reach.
I stop a few feet away.
My hand lifts automatically to my lanyard. The metal of the spare keys knocks against the plastic ID card, a familiar weight. Except—
The key that actually opens the music room isn't here. It's on Isha's lanyard. It's always been on Isha's lanyard.
So why is the music room door already slightly open?
I freeze.
The last time I saw this door, it was hanging wide, people spilling in and out, voices raised and panicked. After that, I avoided this corridor like it was cordoned off with yellow tape.
Now the door is open just a crack. A sliver of darkness shows between the frame and the jamb. No light leaks from inside; the overheads must be off. There's no sound from the room at all, not even the faint hum of the old amp in the corner that used to buzz whenever someone left it plugged in.
My first thought is: Someone must be in there already. Maybe a teacher. Maybe security. Maybe—
My second thought doesn't have words. It's just a drumbeat under my skin.
I glance up at the CCTV camera mounted at the bend in the corridor. It's one of the ones I pushed for after Rhea. The red LED is glowing steadily, little glass eye pointed straight at the music room door.
Good, I think. Good. At least this time, whatever happens, there'll be a record.
I step closer, my sneakers silent on the linoleum. The gap widens a millimeter with the movement of air.
"Aanya?" a voice calls from down the hall.
I flinch and turn. It's Noah, guitar case slung over his back, hair still damp from whatever last‑minute shower he squeezed in. He jogs up, eyes flicking from my face to the door.
"You okay?" he asks. Then, following my gaze: "Huh. Thought that was supposed to stay locked during sets."
"Yeah," I say slowly. "Me too."
For a second we just stand there, side by side, staring at that narrow slice of black.
A memory stirs, sharp enough to sting: Rhea frowning at her schedule, tapping the line that says 7:30 – blackout. Her voice low, just for me: If anything goes wrong, we make sure the music room stays locked, okay? No randoms sneaking in. I don't want any more variables.
No more variables.
The door in front of us is a variable.
Noah shifts his guitar strap. "Maybe Isha already went in?" he says. "To get something?"
"Maybe," I say.
But I saw Isha five minutes ago near the ticket table, counting wristbands with her dad. And if she'd come down here, I feel like I would have noticed. I've been orbiting this wing all night, checking cues, counting bodies.
My fingers tighten around the clipboard. The cardboard edge bites deeper into my palm, right into the spot Rhea's doodle of the crooked‑eared cat sits under the paper.
"Look, we're going to be late for lineup," Noah says. "I can ask a teacher about it after we play. Or text Lena to send security. You don't have to—"
"I need Maya's script," I cut in. My voice sounds strange to my own ears. "She can't go on without it. It's in there."
He hesitates. "You sure you want to—"
"I'm fine," I say. "It's just a room."
I reach for the handle before I can talk myself out of it.
The metal is cool under my fingers. The door gives with almost no resistance, swinging inward on oiled hinges. No sticking. No magnet catching.
For a fraction of a second, as the darkness yawns wider, my brain does something slippery: flashes an image I know isn't real—Rhea on the floor again, her hair fanned out, the overturned stool, the circle of faces above her—
Then the room actually comes into view, and the image dissolves.
The piano is there in the corner, closed. The mic stand is still set up near the middle, the cable coiled neatly at its base. Folding chairs lean against the far wall. The blue folder Rhea used for scripts sits on the piano lid, exactly where I remember.
Everything is in its place.
The only thing that isn't is the door. The only thing I can't account for is why it was open at all.
"See?" I say, more to myself than Noah. "No ghosts."
Noah lets out a breath I didn't realize he was holding. "Cool. I'll, uh, wait here. In case… you know. In case you get attacked by sheet music."
I snort, the sound too loud in the quiet. "Heroic."
He flashes me a brief grin. "I try."
I step over the threshold.
The air inside is different—cooler, sharper, with that faint chalky smell of instrument polish and old paper. It should be comforting; we spent hours in this room rehearsing, laughing, arguing over harmonies. Instead, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I'm halfway to the piano when I notice it.
A tiny rectangle of white, tucked under the edge of the blue folder. Like a bookmark.
I stop. My heartbeat does something weird—a stutter, then a rush.
For a second I think it's one of Rhea's sticky notes, another reminder she left for herself. She used them for everything—on mic stands, water bottles, my backpack. Her handwriting haunting every surface.
But when I slide the scrap free, my own name is on it, in her all‑caps print.
AANYA –
That's all. Just my name and a dash, like she started a sentence and never got to finish it.
There's something written underneath, but the ink has bled, the letters blurred by a water stain that curves across the paper in a crescent. It looks like someone spilled a single drop of something right in the middle and never wiped it up.
I hold it closer to the dim light from the hallway.
All I can make out is three words, smeared but still legible enough to punch the air out of my lungs.
— if door sticks —
The rest is gone.
Behind me, from the corridor, Noah calls, "Aanya? We need to go; Lena's texting."
The note flutters in my hand, lighter than it has any right to be.
Rhea wrote my name. Rhea wrote about the door. Rhea wrote if.
The door didn't stick tonight.
So why was it already open?