Light in the Dark

Chapter Six

     "Okay! Today we're going to pick out monologues for our auditions for the winter play!" Mr. Jet announced, marching into class with a certain pomp and circumstance about him.

"But Mr. Jet! The Homecoming Dance is next month! How can you expect us to pick out a dress, find a date, make plans and memorize a whole monologue?" A freshman whined, I hadn't learned her name yet even though that's all we had been doing for the past few weeks, that and improvisation games.

"It's called multitasking. I'm going to give you two weeks to memorize your monologue and even if you don't want to be in the play you still have to memorize a monologue and it will be a grade. Depending on how well you perform your monologue will determine what part I place you but you do get to give me a list of preferred roles but I get final say," he finished with a grin. Charly raised a confident hand into the air. "Yes, Charly," he called.

"What play are we doing this semester?" she asked, trying to hide the excitement. Mr. Jet's face brightened up.

"I'm so glad you asked, this semester I wanted to try out a challenge. I hope you all want a challenge because this semester we're doing Shakespeare!" he exclaimed. A few soft groans echoed through the room but Emma started to do small first pumps above her head with a brilliant smile. Both she and Charly were excited.

"Which one?" whispered Emma with the utmost excitement.

"I don't think I'll reveal that till - oh you know what I'll just tell you! We're doing 'Much Ado About Nothing'!" Emma squealed, no one and I mean no one had been more excited than her. I couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm.

"Alright, I need all the girls to separate themselves off into groups of three and then all the boys can just be their own group. I'll hand each group a set of monologues that you will read and then choose. Go and circle around with your group and I will drop off the monologues with you." Almost instantly Emma and Charly seized each other's arms, it made me smile. Charly looked at me, her blue eyes shining and waved me over to them.

"Come on Mariah we need a third," Emma persisted. I gave Darik a quick glance, as he went to sit by the rest of the guys. It had been a few weeks since I got hit in the shoulder and we had our semi emotional chat and the funny thing was that ever since we had talked I felt funny, almost as if I had been attracted to him but every time I did feel something like that, memories would dance around reminding me that I had no right to happiness and the feeling went away for a while.

     I grabbed my chair and moved over to Emma and Charly who already had some of the monologues in their hands, their eyes moving over the words, contemplating if the monologue would be a good one. The rest of the monologues were on the floor, I picked one up that was very long and then immediately put it back. Picking up the whole pile I searched for the shortest one but the shortest one had still been a whole page long. I guess it didn't matter since I didn't want to be in the play but I didn't want a bad grade either.

     The short one I had picked up had been a dramatic monologue about a girl talking to her sister, and the audience would find out at the end that her sister was dead and that the person giving the monologue had been talking to a gravestone the whole time. A sharp pain seized my chest and my breathing pattern had picked up a quicker pace. I knew that if I didn't get control of my body I'd make a scene. My eyes found a poster on the wall and focused on it, reading the words over and over again until the pain had subsided enough for my breathing to slow down.

     Taking my eyes off of the poster and back to our group, thankfully neither Emma or Charly had noticed, both of them were invested in different monologues. I didn't want to do the depressing monologue since only reading it had caused a reaction but it had been the shortest one and my memorization skills weren't what they used to be so it would be the one I chose. I held onto the paper and read it over again, each time thinking back to before.