Backstage, the Orpheum no longer looked like a palace. It was a maze of narrow corridors where frightened adults hurried between closed doors, speaking into phones as though volume might repair what had happened. Somebody asked whether the livestream could be taken down, and somebody else explained that hundreds of people had already saved their own recordings. A stagehand pushed a trolley of equipment past Zara's folding chair, glanced at her, and gave a small, sympathetic nod before moving on.
Ms. Johnson sat beside her with an arm around her shoulders. The other choir children had been moved to a supervised room where several parents were collecting them in small groups. Naomi had insisted on hugging Zara three times before leaving, telling her she was the bravest person she knew. Zara had smiled each time but could not escape the feeling that bravery should not leave a person so frightened.
Her mother called during a break at the hospital. Denise was standing in a supply room, still wearing her scrubs, while an ambulance team prepared to bring in another patient. "Baby, are you hurt?" she asked before anything else. "I saw part of it on somebody's phone. Tell me you're all right."
"I'm okay," Zara replied, then added, "I think I made him angry."
"He was angry before you sang," Denise said. "Don't carry that for him. I'm trying to find somebody to cover the end of my shift, but Ms. Johnson is with you, right?"
Zara looked across the corridor at her teacher. "She's here," she said. She did not tell Denise that she wanted to cry, because her mother sounded as though she was standing on the edge of crying herself. The conversation ended when a colleague called Denise back to work, leaving Zara staring at the phone in her lap.
Aaron Fields appeared a little later with two paper cups of hot chocolate from a staff vending station. He offered one to Zara, then asked Ms. Johnson's permission before sitting down. His hands shook as he tried to remove the plastic lid from his own cup. Zara found that strange, because he was a grown man who had worked around famous people and expensive equipment for years, while she had merely asked a question.
"I should have spoken up during soundcheck," he said. "I knew he was watching you. I knew something was wrong with the way he kept asking about the children."
"Why didn't you?" Zara asked.
Aaron considered giving the usual answer about contracts, mortgage payments, and a father who needed medication, then decided she deserved the unvarnished one. "Because I was afraid of losing a job I thought I couldn't replace," he said. "That doesn't make what I did right. It just explains why I was quiet."
Zara looked at the hot chocolate. "I was afraid, too," she admitted.
"I know," Aaron replied. "You were shaking. I could see it from the sound desk."
"Then why did you wait so long to say something?"