Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Events described herein are products of the Narrator’s—Speaker’s—Whatever’s—imagination. Any resemblance to factual incidents, places, or persons (real or deceased) is purely coincidental. Besides this, any relationships between consecutively narrated events is also purely coincidental. Causality, whether by natural or supernatural means, is neither expressed nor implied.
To understand how the troubles arose that resulted in the infamous “Skylight Incident” at the Catholic high school—we begin with Brin Brown and the Drama Club plays she starred in.
Here’s the thing about Brin: she was perfectly willing to dedicate her life to something (to wit: Drama with a Capital D) especially if it involved making the lives of others miserable, because misery did after all bring her great joy.
In 2002, two and a half years before the “Poop-Dick Incident,” the fall play at that curious institution was A Tomb With A View by Norman Robbins. ATWAV is essentially a spoof on the clichés of whodunits: set in an isolated mansion, featuring an eccentric vaguely English family whose crumbling patriarch just kicked the bucket, leaving behind an inheritance to provide motive for any and all of the survivors to turn out to be the creep who keeps popping everybody else off like tenpins.
Consistently, the creep turns out to be the psychiatric nurse employed by the family, because she’s so sweet and normal compared to the rest of them that of course she must actually be a heartless serial killer in disguise.
The nurse is the lead role. In the Catholic high school’s production, she was supposed to be played by Brin Brown, then a sophomore.
But here’s what actually went down.
The production was directed by Finn Jeffers. He had graduated from that curious institution a couple years earlier, and was at that time studying Theater & Dance at Saint Frideswide’s College, in the southern suburbs of that faraway and mysterious city by the bay. Having passed through the Drama Club and its much more byzantine musical theater industrial-complex, he was a key player (so to speak) in their storied skirmishes—or so we are told by numerous reliable sources who nonetheless have expressed a wish to remain anonymous in the matter.
Brin Brown was—is—a phenomenal actor. She’s still in show biz, even now, and if you ever see that name in lights on a theater marquee wherever you are, definitely go see her, because you will not be disappointed.
That being said, Brin was a bit of a hot mess in high school. Hopefully by now she’s found the inner peace that eluded her back then. She lived up to the stereotype about lead actors being veritable drama queens, both onstage and off.
She was devoted to Drama, with a Capital D.
There was this one time when she was trying to do running crew for the musical—she was an actor, but unfortunately not a singer, so that was the remaining option open to her.
You could tell she really wasn’t cut out to bring up the rear in any procession, because instead of just moving with invisible and elegant quickness like all the rest of the black-clad crew people, she was having a bawling tantrum outside the stage door, across the hallway, in the cafeteria, and was being comforted by one or two other crew girls who apparently sympathized with whatever the plight-du-jour was, at least enough to derelict their own duties backstage to sit with her.
It really was a tantrum—her wails and screams rang through the stony walls and deserted hallways of that curious institution. They reverberated off the cafeteria skylight that would later provide the focal point for the infamous “Skylight Incident” which concerns this brief, uneasy, biased history. I
t is to be feared that the Narrator—Speaker—Whatever—never figured out what was troubling poor dear Brin that time, but it may or may not have been the flashpoint for what had happened just a few months earlier, when Finn Jeffers cast her in the autumn play: a farce with mystery-thriller elements.
Having bagged the lead, Brin proceeded to miss every other rehearsal, for the six week production schedule. A fantastic actor both on the stage, and off, her excuses for missing each successive time were never less than believable and sympathetic. They proved the extent of both her talent, and its dark underbelly: that slightly fearful, almost sinister way that she could make you sure in some secret primal part of your own self, that she believed every word she said, when she for example said she had to miss the first off-book rehearsal, because she needed to go visit her poor dear sick old grandmother, bedridden with a life-threatening illness, in the next town over.
It led to a dramatic (hoHO!) revelation where Finn discovered, through the robust grapevine, that his leading lady had missed the first off-book rehearsals where everybody else was present, with a gracefully dissembled “excuse,” so that she could in fact go attend somebody’s birthday pool party that she had been invited to.
In flagrante delicto.
Finn may or may not also have received smoking-gun proof of Brin’s truancy, in the fact of a photograph — warm and freshly printed off of one of the school lasers by a third party who expressed a wish to remain anonymous and who may or may not have remained so. It plainly showed Brin, clad in a winning red hoodie, and feasting on angel food cake beside a pool.
The time stamp on that photo overlapped with the dress rehearsal Brin had insisted she needed to miss, to go visit her poor dear sick granny.
Familial loyalty is not a thing to be trifled with.
It is only possible to betray where loyalty is due.
Maybe it should not therefore surprise the percipient reader to suddenly find out that Brin was spotted crying and screaming in the cafeteria, several months later, attended by several dutiful handmaidens, during rehearsals for the musical; maybe she had just discovered Banquo-style who the traitor among her so-called friends at the pool party had actually been, whose tattling had set into motion the backlash that followed her little ghosting act…….. . . . . . . .
Most directors in Finn’s position, you must realize, would probably just have confronted the flaky lead with the evidence of their disloyalty, and then kicked them out of the play.
But not Finn Jeffers. Oh, no.
In his own four years at that curious institution, he had absorbed its penchant for creative sadism, because here’s what he did instead: At the next rehearsal where Brin was actually present, Finn called for a private meeting with just her, and Clarissa Hennessy, the girl who he had cast as the first murder victim, and who therefore had the fewest lines, and the least onstage time of anybody in the cast. He told them, Regina-George-style, to “Switch Parts.”
He gave no explanation for his decision.
It was two weeks before opening night, which fell on Halloween. This, if you are wondering, is just the kind of shit that Finn would do. He probably did so assuming that Brin would probably acquiesce to a demotion, because he knew she had serious aspirations of becoming a professional actor, and because it was therefore better than the humiliation of having had the lead only to get fired outright—she still could put it on her activities sheet for college applications, and on her then-nascent headshot resume. That was his whimsical punishment for her disloyalty to the stage: not only had she become the now-ex-star of the show, but the only way for her to even still be in the show, hating life, was to pretend to be murdered, over and over and over again, during the darkening nights leading up to Halloween, as Finn looked on at her still and lifeless form, mesmerized.
Nearly all the days were still.
The histrionic lead who tried to ghost her director paid dearly for her betrayal, by being turned into an actual ghost onstage.
It is only possible to betray where loyalty is due. And just so it’s clear: she totally totally totally did acquiesce to falling from grace as the first bumped-off chump. The other girl, Clarissa, stumbled on the lead. And actually even if she wasn’t conventionally pretty the way Brin was, this brief, uneasy, biased history can make no mistake that she stuck the knife in and twisted it (so to speak) with her turn.
Not having auditioned that time, the N/S/W went to see it when they opened. He only found out everything, much later on, piecing it together bit by bit, from other people who were witnesses to the backstage passions set ablaze by that play, and who were only too glad to spill some giant-rampage-summoning beans, because he asked.
You’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with the writing that appeared on the cafeteria skylight, two years later.
All shall reveal itself in due course.