Find Me in Darkness Read Online Free PDF

day to study, but to make myself at home and he’ll be there when I get back from rehearsal.
    I glance at my watch. It’s not yet eleven, and rehearsal doesn’t start until three. Even when I factor in changing my clothes, grabbing a bite, and getting to Brooklyn, I have tons of time. What I should do is start scouring the internet for a day job—I’m thinking about fully embracing the starving actor cliche and waiting tables. Instead, I decide to go for a run.
    I’m not one of those people who loves to run and craves the runner’s high, which I am convinced is only a myth. I do it for practical and vanity based reasons. Vanity, because it’s the best and fastest way to keep my butt and legs looking decent. And practical, because acting is hard work, and the cardio keeps me sharp.
    This morning, I’m not thinking about either of those things, though. Instead, I just want to work off this weird energy. This antsy, almost sexual thrum that has been burning through me since I woke up.
    That must have been one hell of a dream.
    I think about the gray eyes again and wonder to whom they belong. Is he just a figment of my imagination, or am I having sex dreams about someone I met in passing and my subconscious latched onto?
    When she was lucid, my mother would have said he was a lover from a past life. For that matter, she’d probably say the same when she wasn’t sane.
    Either way, he is not real and he is not here, and I tell myself that is a good thing.
    But as I make my way to the lobby and then start out down 59th Street at a slow jog, I can’t help but wonder if the man from my dream really does exist. And, if so, what I will do when I meet him.
    *
    “Tell me, daughter Juliet, how stands your disposition to be married?”
    I look across the stage to Angie, the woman who plays Lady Capulet, my mother. “It is an honor I dream not of.” I am holding the script in my hand, but I don’t have to look at the pages. This is a play that I have loved my entire life. There is something about the romance of it. The tragedy. The star-crossed lovers.
    The story called to me the first time I read it in high school, and playing the role of Juliet now is like living in a dream.
    Beside me, Juliet’s nurse, played by a boisterous woman named Marva, begins her lines. “An honor!” She makes a snorting sound and dives into one of the best deliveries of the rest of her line that I have ever heard. But I am only half-way paying attention. Instead, I am looking off stage, over the rows of seats, to a shadow in the distance.
    There’s someone there . I’m certain of it.
    Someone standing in the shadows and watching me.
    “Christina?”
    I jerk my head up to face Eric, the director. “Sorry. What?”
    “Are we keeping you from a pressing engagement?”
    I stand up straighter and give him my full attention, the very epitome of contrition. Because the last thing I want to do is piss off or insult the very first New York director I’ve worked with. “No. No, of course not. I just—”
    “What?”
    “I was thinking about Juliet’s character,” I lie. “She’s so young, and of course we know she’s a virgin. But she’s still quite sophisticated sexually—I mean, if you don’t pick up on that before, it’s apparent during the balcony scene, right?”
    “Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied,” Eric recites, quoting Romeo’s line.
    “Exactly.” I’m practically giddy that he bought my story. “And she flirts back, asking him what satisfaction he can have right then—I mean, she might as well say you can’t sleep with me now. I’m holding all the cards.” What I don’t mention is that this line really has been taunting me. Because after waking up so aroused, I’ve felt rather unsatisfied myself all day.
    “Very true.” He nods, and I feel a surge of gratitude for my eleventh grade Honors English teacher who worked with me on my semester paper on the role of women in Shakespeare’s plays. Eric shifts his