Light in the Dark

Chapter Six

"Is that the one you're going to do?" Emma asked. Meeting her eyes, I nodded and showed it to her. She read it, and her face softened.

"Wow, a dramatic one, those are difficult but I have a feeling that you'll be really good at it," she commented. A short purge of fear sprang through me, did she know? I decided to play it cool.

"Really? What makes you say that?" I asked, keeping my voice level. Emma shrugged and then looked back at my monologue then back at me.

"I don't know, it just seems like you'd be good at doing something dramatic," she replied. So she didn't know, relief went through my body. How could she have known? I chastised my anxiety for it's stupidity and continued reading.

"Thanks, I think I'm just going to do backstage stuff, not really an actress Darik persuaded me to do this," I rambled.

"I understand, a lot of people here go for backstage but then there are people like Charly and I who love to act and we aren't too bad at it either but before you graduate I think you should do at least one play but only if you're feeling up to it, we don't need another repeat of last year." Both Emma and Charly shuddered, but Charly's face went ghostly white.

"Everyone was on stage and Charly's partner had forgotten his line, which in turn made her forget her own line and they all stood on the stage for a good few minutes just looking at each other," Emma answered.

"It was horrifying," Charly's voice went hollow.

"How did you get over that?" I asked her intrigued. If that were me, I would never go on stage or outside ever again.

"Acting is something that I love to do and I had one bad, awful, terrible experience, but that doesn't mean every performance is going to be like that plus, when you love something you don't just give it up because of one bad thing you have to keep going," she responded. She sounded like an inspirational poster; but you could tell Charly loved theater.

"Wow, thank you Dr. Charly," Emma added with a slow bow. We all let out a small chuckle and they went back to choosing their monologues and continued to read mine trying to memorize it and desensitize myself.

     A little while had passed when I got the weird feeling that someone was watching me, my eyes acted out of instinct and looked to meet the person who had been staring. Darik looked at me with a soft gaze of something that I hadn't seen him wear before, quickly I looked back down to my own monologue and furrowed my eyebrows together.

"We are out of time, I hope you chose your monologue because this was the only day to pick them. Okay, pack up." Stuffing my monologue into my backpack, I risked another glance up to Darik, who had his eyes trained on his monologue. I picked up my chair then stacked it with the rest of the chairs.

"What monologue did you choose?" I asked him as he stood next to me.

"I picked a romantic one," he responded. I smiled smugly at myself. "What's with the smirk?" he asked.

"Nothing, I just - I had a feeling that you would pick something like that." My comment didn't satisfy his curiosity.

"Why?" he asked, still wearing a casual grin.

"Because it just seems like something you'd pick, I don't know," I responded.

"Well what did you pick?" he asked, changing the subject.

"The shortest one I could find and even then it's still pretty long," I replied, with a twinge of anxiety lining my voice.

"Don't worry about it, if it makes you feel better we can read to each other during our free period. Sound good?"