Body Heat. Adrianne Byrd

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      Too many times her father had urged her to give up this whole writing thing and get a real job. Not that she hadn’t tried. She had been everything from a waitress at a café to a much-maligned bill collector in order to pay her bills. What her parents and most of her friends failed to understand was that writing was her bliss. It was what she was born to do.

      And tonight was her chance to prove it to the world, share her art, and let the New York theater community know that NICOLE JAMISON HAS ARRIVED.

      Nikki drew a deep breath as a bright smile blossomed across her face, while her heart pounded like a racehorse.

      “Nikki. Nikki.”

      Nicole whipped her head around to see Crystal Cummings, rushing toward her. Alarm bells immediately went off in Nicole’s head when she saw her lead actress’s face quickly turning puke-green.

      Definitely not a good sign.

      “Crystal, what is it?” Even as the question left her lips, Nikki’s heart sank in anticipation of bad news. What would her life be without bad news?

      “I can’t—I can’t go on.” Crystal slapped a hand over her mouth just as a gagging, gurgling, chugging noise rose from her throat. Next, Crystal’s large brown eyes bulged before she took off like a shot toward a plastic garbage can by the small buffet table.

      The other actors scattered out of the way, but the sound of Crystal vomiting had a domino effect, causing a few more actors to turn green. That was the beauty of throwing up—either the sound or smell was all it took to spark a real outbreak.

      “No. No. No.” Nikki covered a hand over her heart as if that was going to stop everything from falling apart. It took a few more seconds for her to realize that she needed to do something. She rushed over to the garbage can and held Crystal’s long wavy hair away from her face. It was the least she could do. But the stench wafting from the trash can now had the knots in Nikki’s stomach flopping around.

      The understudy. Nikki’s gaze whipped around as she looked backstage for Crystal’s understudy. “Where’s Grace?” she shouted, but her question was met with blank stares from the other actors. Then she caught a quick glimpse out of the corner of her eyes. “Grace!”

      The woman froze.

      A second set of alarm bells went off when she noticed Grace looked like a deer caught in headlights. Definitely another bad sign.

      Nikki released Crystal’s hair and raced over to Grace. “You’re gonna have to go on tonight.” She may as well have told the understudy that she had terminal cancer from the look of sheer horror that blanketed Grace’s face.

      “I can’t. I can’t.” Grace stepped back until her small frame was pressed against the back wall.

      “What do you mean?” Nikki grabbed the young, pencil-thin actress by the shoulders, but then reminded herself at the last second that it was illegal to snap the woman in half. “We don’t have a choice. You have to go on.”

      “B-But I didn’t learn the lines,” she confessed in a high-pitched whine.

      “What?” Nikki’s heart sank deeper in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean you didn’t learn the lines? You’re Crystal’s understudy.”

      “I know…But Crystal is such a good actress I didn’t think anything could go wrong. Not to mention my college courses are really kicking my ass this quarter and my boyfriend and I have been fighting and—”

      “Grace! Focus!”

      The young understudy snapped her jaw shut. But then Grace’s eyes started blinking so much, Nikki was afraid that she was in the middle of an epileptic fit.

      “The bottom line is that you didn’t bother to learn your lines,” Nikki said, feeling as if the floor was spinning beneath her feet. “I don’t believe this. In a few minutes I’m about to be the biggest joke on Broadway.”

      “You mean off-off-Broadway,” Grace corrected.

      Nikki’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t push it. You’re already on my bad side.”

      Grace teared up. “I’m really, really sorry.” And with that weak-ass apology, she scampered off.

      “Curtain in two minutes,” Barbara, Nikki’s stage manager-slash-assistant-slash-baby sister, announced as if everything was all sunshine and roses.

      Barbara caught sight of Nikki’s horror-stricken face and rushed right over. “What’s wrong?”

      “I don’t have a lead actress,” Nikki choked out. She checked over her shoulder to see Crystal still hunched over the garbage can and dry heaving into it. “You don’t happen to have a gun on you, do you?”

      Barbara steered her sister’s attention away from the sick actress. “C’mon now. She’s not worth it.”

      “It’s not for her. It’s for me. I’d rather do myself in than have the critics do it.”

      “C’mon. It’s not like Ben Brantley is out there.”

      “Please. Who needs The New York Times when you have this little bitty thing called the Internet?”

      The desperation of the situation seemed to finally hit Barbara because she clammed up for a few seconds. “But what about—?”

      “She didn’t learn her lines,” Nikki answered in a flat tone. “An understudy that doesn’t study…” She smacked her palm against her forehead—which seemed to flip the switch on a lightbulb. Nikki looked at her sister with renewed hope.

      Barbara’s eyes bulged as she inched away. “Don’t look at me. I’m not an actress.”

      “But you know the lines.”

      “Just because I read the script doesn’t mean I memorized the lines,” Barbara stressed, trying to pull her arm out her sister’s grasp. “You’re not going to get me to go out there and make a fool of myself.”

      Nikki’s hopes plummeted as fast as they had risen.

      “What about you?” Barbara suggested. “Nobody knows this script like you do.”

      “I’m not an actress,” Nikki protested with the same horror her sister displayed just moments before.

      “Yeah, but you seem to be a little short on those tonight,” Barbara reminded her.

      In sync, their watches beeped. A hush came over the whole theater.

      “It’s showtime,” Barbara said, whispering the obvious.

      Nikki felt ill, but she knew what she had to do. “Go out there and stall,” she instructed Barbara. “I need two minutes. I’m going to have to go on.”

      “Are you sure?”

      “You have a better idea?” she asked, in a voice that was ironically tinged with both sarcasm and hope.

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