Made Glorious by Lindsay Eagar

Author:Lindsay Eagar [Eagar, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536237474
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2024-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

NO FUCKING WAY.

Annie Neville? Our Annie Neville?

She’s not going to be our Annie anymore. Pam won’t let her stay in the show now.

Pam already had it out for her — you know Annie missed set day, too?

This is beyond set day. The cops are here — Annie’s going to jail.

Not jail, but maybe juvie. Or rehab.

She’s not going to rehab. She wasn’t taking the drugs; she was selling them. That’s what I heard.

Me, too. The cops found her prescription bottle in Hastings’s locker. A bunch of old empty ones, too.

Damn. That’s heavy. I had no idea Annie was into this kind of stuff.

No one did.

Hopefully she’s got a good lawyer.

Who cares about her? What about us? We open in three weeks!

Pam will find someone else —

Someone else? Who? No Clarissa and now no Annie. Who else is there?

Rory sits in Euripides, down near the music rooms. The police presence outside of Hardy has communicated the clear message: Back off. Give the investigation some space. But the Princely Players can’t possibly imagine eating lunch in the cafeteria, along with the rest of the student population — as if they are expected to play normal, the one role they cannot master — and so they are sprawled along the floor here, clumped closer than usual, spreading their crudely acquired information like mono.

Some are spilling rumors and some are listening; Rory is among the latter, tearing her turkey sandwich to shreds as she takes in all the incriminating clues, the rationalizations, the projected outcomes.

“It happened to my aunt,” Preston says with a spirit of well-earned wisdom. “She hurt her neck and they put her on pain pills. But they made her nauseous, so she didn’t take them — and then she started selling them to some college kids. She made bank. They let her off with community service.”

No matter how many of these stories are swapped, no matter how many gentle jokes are cracked, it does nothing to alleviate the anxiety that one of their own, the star of their show, was a secret kingpin this whole time. Annie, the best actor of them all.

And there is worry for her sake, absolutely, because even though Annie didn’t stick her snout up Pam’s trousers like the rest of them, Annie is part of the production. Part of the family — a small part, a distant cousin, but family nonetheless.

So when the door to the drama room opens and Annie steps out into the hallway, everyone falls silent as the bereaved at a funerary procession — they all watch her shuffle with the police officers, coming for the drinking fountain on stiff legs, her pace zombie-like, her eyes red rimmed and swollen, staring ahead at nothing, clearly in shock.

Annie takes a long sip from the fountain. Even when she’s done drinking, she keeps the water streaming, watching it seep down the drain. She glances up, and her onlookers are reverent, standing with their hands respectfully interlaced in front of them or else in their pockets.

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