The Inadequate Experiments: 1. White Noise [Rough Draft]

Part 2; Inequity - 8. The Ticking of the Clock

“Stop! Stop, stop!”

I sighed, throwing my script to the ground in frustration. It was about the fifth time Mrs Skylard had stopped us in the past hour. The whole drama class was at school, on a weekend, giving up our free time, for a dress rehearsal, so we could perfect the first half of the school play, Pride & Prejudice. And as Mrs Skylard’s standards went, we were more slaughtering the play than perfecting it.

“Sera, my dear,” she flustered about me, pulling on the gown she had thrown me in when I arrived, rustling the extensive petticoat and brushing out the non-existent creases. “What’s gotten into you my dear? Is there trouble at home? Do you need a break? Your creative juices don’t seem to be flowing as well as they should be.”

I sighed again, scratching my arm where the itchy lace of the gown came to. I wished she could have set the play in our century or something close; at least then I wouldn’t have to wear a series of boisterous gowns and learn to walk with a book on my head without it falling off. Then there was the posture, the facial expressions, the body language, not to mention how low I had to curtsey depending on which character I was curtseying to. “Mrs Skylard, in a home like mine, there’s always trouble. I guess I’m just a little distracted today.”

Distracted, though I would never mention it to any one of the people in the room, was an understatement. At the other end of the room, hanging from the roof, there was a projector. For the performance, there would be a series of cameras connected up to it and it would be projecting the play like a film onto a white wall beside the stage. That day, the projector was broken. Like the bill board in the City, the image it was projecting on the wall was like an ancient television gone static. Every now and then, the message would pop up then disappear; The Watch Liaise.

The message that I couldn’t translate or figure out seemed to be following me; a fact I didn’t appreciate in the slightest. It was constantly there in the corner of my eye, or rather, the corner of Projections, televisions and computer screens. Even malfunctioning Watches on peoples’ wrists. They would show the twelve consecutive zeroes then flicker to the message, and flicker back. It was driving me insane; not only the fact that I couldn’t figure out the meaning, but also the fact that I was the only one who could see it in the first place.

“It shows, my dear.” she mumbled. “Do try to concentrate. I can’t imagine how hard things must be for you; I imagine that by now your mother only has weeks.” she fanned her face dramatically, her voice full of pity. She patted my shoulder softly.

My stomach flew to my throat; I had been so preoccupied by everything – Oliver, Cooper, the message, the performance, the paparazzi, getting over a concussion – that I hadn’t noticed the date. It was the middle of May. The Scientists said they doubted my Mum would make it through June. The fact that I had forgotten, that I had barely seen my Mum the past few weeks when there was a ninety-per-cent chance that this was her last month, made me feel sick to the stomach and my breath caught in my throat. Needles pricked at the back of my eyes and I looked down to the floor, trying to blink them away. When that didn’t work, I tried staring into the stage lights – something my Mum had taught me when I was about to go onstage for my first performance ever. When I was younger, I used to cry when I got nervous (Mum said it was most likely from frustration – being frustrated at the fact that I was nervous), so she told me that when trying not to cry, looking into bright lights tended to help – but not to look at them for too long, of course. That didn’t work either. Not much of a surprise, really; I was having a bad week (hell, a bad month) as it was – I didn’t need to be reminded of the fact that my mother was dying.

I hated crying in front of people more than anything else. I hated crying, period. Well, I supposed I was in a drama classroom, so no one could exactly yell at me for crying – I could be acting for all they knew. But I imagined they would know. I had to cry onstage before. They would definitely be able to tell the difference. So, in all my glory (or not), I hitched the gown up to my ankles and ran from the room choking back tears. I felt my hair fall out of the pins that Tia had spent half an hour weaving through my hair to make it look perfect for my role, but at that moment I couldn’t care less about the way my hair looked. I needed to get out of there, and I needed to get out of there fast. Somehow, even in the dress and high heel boots I had to wear, I managed to run down to the woodwork rooms and sit myself down on the stairs out front before I burst fully into tears.