The Student's Prompt Book Named The Man Beside The Booth

June brought her prompt book in a grocery bag. A blue brace covered her right wrist.

I saw her only in the hall outside the meeting room. Tamsin had asked me to stay out of the interview.

"You don't have to help me," I said.

June looked at her mother.

"I'm trying to tell what happened."

"Then that's enough."

I waited downstairs beside a vending machine that would not take my dollar. For fifty minutes, I smoothed the bill against my knee.

When they came out, June held her grocery bag with her good hand. Tamsin had copied the marked pages and given the book back.

"Can I still use it?" June asked.

"Keep those pages as they are," Tamsin said. "The rest is your working book."

June nodded. Her shoulders dropped a little.

Nora later told me Tamsin had started by explaining that June could take a break, ask for a question to be repeated, or correct an answer. She did all three. Nobody told her the words they hoped to hear. When she did not remember something, her statement said she did not remember it.

Later, with Nora's permission, Tamsin told Ruth and me what June had said. We received the written statement through Ruth.

On Tuesday afternoon, June had heard a rough knocking above the curtain. She called a hold and sent Theo Lane, the light-board operator, to find an adult.

Douglas came up to the booth.

June showed him the note she had made: Curtain Noise. Stop Lift.

"He said he had cleared the work," her statement read. "He said Ms. Redd had signed everything."

She had asked if they should wait for the drama teacher, who was dealing with costumes in another room.

Douglas said the teacher would only call him anyway.

"I asked again because of the noise. He said, 'Keep rehearsing. I'm standing right here.'"

June wrote the order in the margin of her cue sheet. That was what stage managers did when someone changed a plan.

Beside it, she wrote DC, Booth, 4:12.

Five minutes later, the curtain fell.

I read that page without moving.

Below the order, June had drawn a small box around the next lighting cue. Even while she was scared, she had been trying to keep the show straight.

"She said he told her a report about stopping rehearsal would hurt her recommendation," Tamsin said.

"College?"

"A summer stage program. He provided district references."

Ruth closed her eyes for a moment.

"We need that message preserved if there is one."

"There is. Her mother has authorized a copy."

Theo came in the next day with his father. Tamsin interviewed him separately. She did not show him June's book first.

His account matched the main events. He had fetched Douglas. He had heard June ask for a hold. He had seen Douglas beside the booth door when the lift started again.

He also had a phone video.

He had filmed a lighting change from the rear aisle to show the teacher. The picture showed very little of Douglas. His yellow vest crossed one edge. A key ring tapped the metal booth rail.

The audio caught June asking, "Still go?"

An adult voice answered, "Keep rehearsing."

"Can the recording identify him by itself?" Ruth asked.

"No," Tamsin said. "The students can explain whom they saw and heard. The original recording supports their accounts."

That was why their words mattered. My Monday video proved an order to change a motor. Their accounts placed him beside a running system after someone had asked to stop.

Edwin's signed statement arrived the same afternoon.

He admitted cutting my lock under Douglas's order. He admitted installing the motor without a new test. Douglas had told him the approval was already handled.

"I should have called you," he wrote. "I didn't."

There was no excuse after that sentence.

I was grateful for that, too.

The engineer's report followed. The replacement controls had defeated the upper stop. The hoist kept pulling until part of the lift attachment failed. Friday's inspected setup was not the setup that fell.

Tamsin placed the report beside the two student statements.

"Now we have the equipment change, the removed lock, and the order to keep running."

I asked when the district would clear my name.

"Ruth is asking today. The money review is separate."

"He said I stole maintenance funds."

"Then his own spending gets checked, too."

That evening, I stood in my work bay and counted the empty hooks where booked jobs should have been hanging. A curtain repair. A school stage inspection. A church hall safety check.

My phone rang.

The outside accountant introduced herself as Mara Velez.

"I'm reviewing a forty-eight-hundred-sixty-dollar motor invoice," she said. "The district says your signature approved it."

"It didn't."

"I believe we can show that. There's another problem. The business on this invoice is registered to Douglas Creel."