The Apprentices by Maile Meloy Read Free Book Online

breakfast, or we’ll be late.”
    She sat happily munching the crunchy toast and the soft, salty egg, thinking about how delicious salt was in small quantities, and how important the ability to remove it was. The vast oceans of the world could be drinkable.
    She sailed through the day at East High, chatting with Raffaello’s friends at lunch, joking about who was going to try out for the school play, a production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
    “I’d want to be the guy with the donkey head,” Raffaello said.
    “They aren’t going to cover those curls with a donkey head,” a girl said. “They’d make you one of the lovers, Demetrius or Lysander.”
    Raffaello made a face. “What kind of dumb names are those?”
    “This from a boy named
Raffaello
?” the girl asked.
    “I can’t be in a play anyway,” he said. “Some of us have responsibilities, you know.”
    He sounded like he was bragging, and the girl laughed at him, but Janie heard a tinge of regret in his voice.
    That night in the restaurant when the dishes were done, Giovanna closed out the till, and Raffaello stacked bread baskets. One of the cooks made Janie a bowl of linguine pesto. She ventured, “They’re doing a play at school.”
    “Sixty, sixty-five, seventy,”
Giovanna said, under her breath.
    Janie took a bite of creamy green pasta and waited for Giovanna to finish counting, then said, “I think Raffaello would be great in it.”
    “Raffaello can’t be in a play. He has a job.”
    “It’s only for a few months.”
    Raffaello watched their conversation from across the kitchen, pretending not to listen. The rest of the kitchen staff was cautiously interested in anyone taking on Giovanna for any reason.
    “It will make him a better waiter than being a busboy will,” Janie said.
    “Oh?” Giovanna said, accepting the challenge. “Why?”
    “Because you have to memorize lines, and speak clearly, and perform. Those are all things waiters have to do well.”
    “He can practice being a waiter by being a
waiter,
” Giovanna said. “In fact, Raffaello, you should start. No more busboy.”
    This was going the wrong way. “But if he gets one of the romantic leads, people will see him and talk about him,” Janie said quickly. “Girls will want their parents to bring them to the restaurant where he works.”
    “And if he’s only the boy who holds the spear?”
    “Then he’ll get the lead in the next play. And people will come here to see him.”
    Giovanna shook her head, looking down at her neat piles of cash. “We have many customers now.”
    “You wouldn’t be happy with more?”
    “We have better ways to make the advertisement.”
    “You can do those, too. Put an ad in the play’s program. All I’m saying is that Raffaello is underused here, clearing dishes. You should get him onstage where more people can see how charming he is.”
    Giovanna gazed across the kitchen at her nephew, sizing him up as an undeveloped asset. “You want to be in this play?” she asked him.
    He nodded nervously, which made his curls bounce around his temples.
    “Speak up, child!” she commanded. “They don’t hear you in the back of the theater like this!”
    * * *
    In the morning, Janie splashed water on her face and dashed up to Grayson, hoping that Mr. Willingham had remembered, one last time, to leave the chemistry door unlocked for her. The knob turned in her hand. She sent the headmaster a silent
thank you
across the campus, expecting the largest crystal yet on the thread in the tank at the back of the room. Then she stopped, staring.
    There was no crystal.
    There was no tank.
    There was no apparatus.
    Her salt, her beakers, her condensation-collecting tubes, the roll of thread, the carefully capped bottles—the whole thing was gone.
    Janie closed her eyes for a few seconds, thinking she was hallucinating with tiredness, and opened them again. Nothing had changed. The back counter was still empty. She walked slowly toward it, feeling