𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐏𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐊𝐈𝐃𝐒 (𝐡𝐬𝐦𝐭𝐦𝐭𝐬.)¹

FOUR. bless pops off

Seb gave her a warm smile. "Hi, I'm Seb."

"Blessica," Bless responded with a smile. "So, I guess we're like twins now."

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure one of us is prettier."

"I agree and it's obviously you," Bless declared, sending the boy a wink, and Seb smiled bashfully.

Miss Jenn and Carlos sat in their seats, with the former saying, "Don't forget to silence your phones." Once everyone was seated, Miss Jenn continued, "I realized that you all walked in here as strangers."

"Actually, EJ's my cousin," Ashlyn voiced. Bless furrowed her brows, glancing between Ashlyn and EJ. They were cousins?

"But after today," Miss Jenn continued despite Ashlyn's announcement, "you're a family, one tribe, committed to lifting this classic film to new heights." Interrupting Miss Jenn again was the sound of a shutter coming from Carlos, who took a selfie with his choreographer placard. Noticing the stares, Carlos put his phone and placard down. "Please take your neighbor's hands." Bless held Seb and Ashlyn's hands, while Miss Jenn ushered everyone to do so. She looked to Big Red, who sat by the stage manager's placard. "Hand." The last pair who hadn't held hands yet were EJ and Ricky, who didn't look like they wanted to. Miss Jenn, however, gave them pointed looks. "Hands." Once they eventually held hands, Miss Jenn carried on. "Feel each other's energy. Let the silence speak volumes. In a world filled of 'no', this is a space filled of 'yes'."

"Nice," Carlos whispered to Miss Jenn. "Did you just come up with that?"

"I did."

There was a moment of comfortable silence and Bless was starting to relax a bit. Well, until someone started singing We're All In This Together. Furrowing her brows, Bless looked at the source of the voice and found that it was Miss Jenn. When the woman finally finished her high note, Ashlyn began clapping and was the only one clapping. Bless reached over to her and put her hands down while Ashlyn smiled awkwardly.

Next was the warmups. When Miss Jenn said warmups, Bless assumed vocal warmups. She didn't, however, think that Miss Jenn would make everyone stand up and jump in their spots while shaking their hands. To say Bless was weirded out was an understatement, but she was used to warmups like these. In sports, not in theatre.

The actual reading portion of the read-through began shortly. And it definitely began to quite a rocky start. Bless assumed that if Big Red was filling in as stage manager, he would've been able to read like a decent seventeen-year-old kid who had received a proper education. That wasn't the case.

As Big Red read the script aloud, Bless only grew more and more infuriated and she started to see that everyone else was too, while most people grew shocked. Big Red wasn't even pausing at the correct punctuation or putting any emotion into his words. He was just reading slowly in one go in a deadpanned tone.

"Stop," Miss Jenn finally said and Bless let out a relieved sigh. "Don't run it all together. Read the punctuation."

Hopefully, Big Red would take Miss Jenn's suggestion and read properly... or at least at the level of a fifth-grader. However, that wasn't the case when the boy opened his mouth again.

"Sharpay comma heads for class period..." Big Red read.

Bless didn't know if she wanted to strangle herself or strangle Big Red to make this living nightmare end. It seemed like Big Red was oblivious to the stares that he got as he carried on reading. Finally, after an hour (which felt like an eternity), he got near the end of Act I.