The Jumbee (4 page)

Esti slowly relaxed. “I think so.” She flinched at the memory of being onstage with Paul, then abruptly remembered something else. “Does Mr. Niles use a sound system for prompting?”

“Not that I know of. Did you have that in Oregon?”

“No, it’s just that Romeo sounded like he was right beside me during my Juliet audition.”

“Romeo?”

“That deep voice during my balcony scene.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about. Greg’s the only guy I know with a sexy voice, and he wasn’t anywhere near you.” Carmen raised her eyebrows. “Do you usually hear voices when you’re acting?”

Esti had to giggle. “Sure, all the time. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, gal.” Carmen smiled, rather sadly. “I heard that Paul’s haunting the theater now, and his voice was pretty deep. Maybe his ghost was talking to you.”

Esti thought about Paul’s last words to her, trying to picture him as the rich voice of Romeo. Not a chance. When she shook her head, Carmen gave her an abashed look.

“Sorry, I’m being rude again. Just don’t tell me you got the gift, like Lucia.”

“The gift?”

“Second sight. Everyone’s afraid of Lucia, because her mom talks to jumbees. Since her mom’s the janitor here at Manchicay, Lucia gets free tuition.” As Carmen crossed her forefingers to ward off evil, her voice took on an exaggerated West Indian accent. “You be careful, mon, or de jumbee come get you in de night. No one ever see you again.”

“I’ve heard about jumbees.” Esti laughed and shook her head. “But I don’t believe in ghosts. Do you?”

“I don’t think so. But you’d be surprised how many people do around here.”

Esti was pretty certain she hadn’t imagined Romeo’s reply, or—she straightened in surprise—the murmured sonnet on her first day in the theater. The memory filled her with unexpected warmth. With a quick, startled smile, she moved the subject away from jumbees. “You’re sure I’m Lady Capulet this semester?”

“Let’s go see. Niles always posts it beside the stage.”

“Won’t the theater be locked by now?”

Carmen grinned. “No one on Cariba ever locks their doors.”

Esti followed her new friend across the grass, suddenly hoping for the tiny part of Juliet’s mother. It might be a nice change of pace. For once in her life, she could focus on being a real girl, and maybe she would even find a boyfriend. Yeah, Carmen was definitely good for her.

“I got everyone right!” Carmen heaved herself up to sit on the stage. “Evening rehearsals, as usual. I promise it will be the very last time I say this, but I can’t believe I’ll be acting with The Great Legard’s daughter this year. I’m so excited.”

She studied Esti’s face, then shook her head. “Didn’t you like your dad?”

“He was perfect.” Esti perched on the edge of the stage, pulling her legs up until she could wrap her arms tightly around them. “Absolutely, totally perfect. I miss him so much that sometimes I think part of me died too.” Resting her chin on her knees, she contemplated the cast list above the stage. “But I’ll never live up to his reputation.”

“Don’t talk like that.” Carmen gave Esti a quick, unexpected hug. “We’re both going to rock the talent scouts this year, Jane Doe. You just wait and see.”

Act One. Scene Three.

“How did it go today?” Aurora came out through the sliding doors, juggling a wineglass and two boxes of takeout Chinese.

Esti jumped up to help her arrange things on the tiny balcony table. “I got the part of Lady Capulet, and I met a very cool Puerto Rican girl named Carmen. She’s playing Nurse.”

“Lady Capulet?” Aurora didn’t hide her indignation. “Who got Juliet, then?”

“Danielle, the blond girl who was here the other day. I always suspected that Shakespeare didn’t really envision my straight brown hair and flat chest.”

“You know the actors were all men back then.” Aurora sat down and took a sip of wine. “Juliet probably had to shave every morning.”

Esti tried to laugh.

“I was so sure you’d be Juliet again,” her mom said with a frown. “I can’t believe they’re making you play Juliet’s mother.”

“It’s okay, Aurora. The other kids are really good.”

“They’d better be.”

Esti squirmed on her rattan chair, pretty sure the words were meant as a compliment. Aurora still seemed to harbor some reservations about Cariba, and Esti wasn’t entirely certain what her mom expected from her.

Her dad had always expected perfection, of course. When Esti was younger, she’d always been eager to comply. She thought about how she had worshipped his private office in the middle of their house, warm and regal, with full-length windows overlooking Lithia Park. She hadn’t been allowed in at all until she turned ten, but by the time she was a teenager, she spent most of her time there. The day she turned thirteen, she had devoted her entire birthday to making a collage of pictures for an upcoming acting seminar he had planned.

They worked side by side, she remembered, surrounded by cheerful lute music and the tap-tap-tap of the computer keyboard. Occasional bursts of cinnamon and honey swirled through the air, promising a yummy birthday
tarte
to follow Aurora’s annual Elizabethan birthday dinner of
artichoak pye
and
spinnedge fritters.

“Why don’t you use the same handout you used last time?” Esti had asked her dad, stealing glances across the room as she arranged her ideas into words and images. His unruly black hair had needed a haircut, she remembered, his hazel eyes twinkling beneath the signature bushy eyebrows.

“Each seminar is different.” He reached over to tousle her long hair. “This class is for kids your age, so they’ll relate to your ideas. In fact, I’d like for you to come with me, if Aurora lets you miss a couple of days of school. I can’t think of a better teacher than a girl who already knows what she’s doing.”

Esti barely remembered the pride she’d felt around her dad before she decided to jump headfirst into his world. Before he proved to her the brilliant, devastating perfection of his acting. Since the television performance, all Esti had accomplished was a lot of self-doubt. And after today, she was pretty sure Aurora must doubt her abilities as well.

“You know what Dad would say,” she said, glancing back at her mom. “
It’s fine that you didn’t get Juliet this time; this is a chance to prove yourself in a different way.
He could always steal the show, even when he played a small role.”

Aurora smiled. “You can too, sweetie. You know that.”

“Thanks.” Esti picked up a spoonful of fried rice, then put it back down again. She couldn’t eat with this feeling of knives in her stomach. Only her dad had been honest with her—both supportive and ruthless—in a way she never doubted.

“Listen,” she said, “after dinner I want to walk back down to the school. I’d like to see the theater again, without so many people around.”

“That’s a good idea. Do you mind if I stay here?” At Esti’s nod, Aurora lifted her glass of wine. “I’m in the mood to feel sorry for myself.”

“I’m feeling the same way.” Esti’s eyes were drawn to the nearby island, beautiful despite the eerie rumors. It was so hard to let go sometimes; no wonder people believed in ghosts.

The high school campus had been renovated from a centuries-old sugarcane plantation. The theater was the biggest and most ornate building, with conch shells and coral worked into mosaics of rock and red brick. As she approached the old stone structures, Esti thought about the school brochures Rodney Solomon had given them before they moved here. While the glossy photos were stunning, they didn’t capture the exquisite reality of seashell patterns fading in the twilight. Its peacefulness lifted her spirits until she recognized the two people sitting on the grass.

“Hi, Danielle,” she said awkwardly. “Hi, Greg.”

“Hey, Leg-guard.”

Greg smiled at her just as Danielle demanded, “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to come down and look around.” Esti glanced at the fading silhouettes of islands in the sea. “It’s pretty.”

Danielle shrugged suspiciously. “Yeah, the campus is nice.”

“Built on misery.” Greg leaned back, his hands propped on the grass behind him. “Elon Somand was a brutal slave master.”

“Don’t even get started.” Danielle whacked him on the shoulder.

“Danielle comes from slave owners, but her dad’s ancestors were the
nice
kind, right? Not the ones who worked their slaves to death.” Greg grinned. “It does get kind of spooky around here after dark. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the jumbees wailing.”

Esti wondered if Greg was trying to scare her, or if this was some sort of subtle flirting. All she wanted was a few minutes of quiet meditation in the theater building, and maybe—she suppressed a sheepish smile—the unlikely chance to hear Romeo’s voice again. Before she could think of an excuse to go inside, however, the theater door swung open.

A tall West Indian man walked out with Mr. Niles, breaking into a movie-star smile as he saw her. “Esti! How are you doing?”

“Hi, Rodney.” She returned Rodney Solomon’s hug. “Hi, Mr. Niles.”

“Good evening, Mr. Solomon,” Danielle said formally. “My mom didn’t tell me you were back on the island.”

He laughed. “I’ve had a lot of catching up to do. Esti, could you tell your mom I’ll stop by tomorrow? Jayna wants me to make sure there are no problems with your house.”

“The house is great,” Esti assured him. “But I’ll tell Aurora you’re coming.”

As the two men walked away, Danielle gracefully rose to her feet. “Come on, Greg,” she said in an irritated voice. “My parents hate it when we’re late for dinner.”

With a sigh, Esti walked to the front of the theater. Although the wooden panels along the side walls were firmly shut, she was relieved to see that Mr. Niles had left the main doors unlocked. She groped along the rough wall for a minute, trying to remember where she’d seen rows of light switches. Finally she gave up and carefully made her way into the room, her peripheral vision slowly discerning the faint path of an aisle.

As her footsteps echoed in the room, she inhaled deeply, tasting the scent of damp stone and old wood, a hint of mothballed costumes and greasepaint lingering in the air. The smell of the dark theater reminded her of the old playhouse in Los Angeles, and she smiled.

No one in the world had existed in that playhouse except little Serene memorizing lines with her dad. He loved to recite Shakespeare with all the lights off, testing her memory and praising her efforts. Darkness was the best way to rehearse, he often said as she grew older, as it kept an actor honest. It also made sure she would never be afraid of the dark.

She sat on the edge of the stage, tapping her heels against the wood. She rarely thought of Serene Terra unless she was filling out official paperwork. Rafe Solomon had actually been the one who started calling her by her initials when she was in kindergarten
.
Even though she liked the hippy-chick name her mom had given her, it had been thrilling to have a different identity around Rafe.

With a sigh, she leaned back. Rafe had been so shy when he first moved to Los Angeles, she remembered; a lot of kids avoided him because he had a West Indian accent and the darkest skin in her high-priced neighborhood. Since Rodney worked with her dad, however, Esti and Rafe soon became friends. He would help with her math homework, then watch while she practiced her Shakespeare skits, cracking her up with silly comments, like
“What pencil have Hamlet use, mon? 2B or not 2B?”

With his accent, he made the name Esti sound mysterious and grown-up, like one of Shakespeare’s characters. Although he was a year older than she was, they quickly became inseparable. When her family moved away to Oregon a few years later, she decided to stop introducing herself as Serene. Esti had become her name.

“Serene, doff thy name,” Esti said to the empty theater. Sighing again, she added wistfully, “And for that name which is no part of thee, take all myself.”

“I take thee at thy word.” Romeo’s rich voice filled the stage.

Esti leaped to her feet, instantly forgetting about Rafe. “Who’s there?”

“Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized.” A hint of a smile colored his reply. “Henceforth I never will be Romeo.”

His voice sent a delightful thrill along her spine. “What man art thou,” she said before she could stop herself, “that thus bescreen’d in night so stumblest on my counsel?”

“By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am. But I’d like to know what Niles is thinking, to have Danielle play Juliet when he has such a rare opportunity in you.”

She couldn’t help the smile playing on her lips. “Okay, where are you?”

“On the stage, of course.”

She twisted around, surprised at her difficulty in pin-pointing his voice. She knew she should feel uneasy talking to a strange guy in the dark, but the warmth in his tone made the thought of fear seem ridiculous. “What are you doing here?”