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“Student discount?” she asked automatically, smiling.
He paid $112 for a seat in the balcony. It hurt. It hurt the way a good workout hurts—clean, honest, earned.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because she was right, and he hated that more than anything.
Ellie finally looked at him. Her expression was softer than usual. “Leo, you told me last week you couldn’t afford your textbook for Directing II.”
Three days later, Leo walked past the Princess of Wales Theatre. The marquee glowed amber in the dusk. He stood there for a long time, hands in the pockets of his worn coat, watching people in nice clothes stream toward the doors. He could almost smell the inside—the old wood, the dust of the curtains, the particular hush before the overture.
“No,” he said quietly. “Full price tonight.”
It was a small, sacred loophole. Show your student ID at the box office of the Royal Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, or the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, and suddenly a $150 orchestra seat became $39. Still not nothing—but possible, if you skipped lunch for a week. Leo had built a whole secret religion around it. He saw Come From Away twice, Hamilton once (standing room only, but he didn’t care), and a strange, brilliant one-man show about a beekeeper that made him cry in the dark.
Leo had been in love with the stage since he was seven years old, when his grandmother took him to see The Lion King at the Princess of Wales Theatre. The moment the savannah rolled out and the animals appeared, something in his chest cracked open. He didn’t just watch the story—he fell into it.
