Lie Until You Laugh

3- New Starts

“Redneck?” I blurt before I can even stop myself.

“You can’t hear your own voice?” He scoffs with a smirk. “I’ll catch you later, Red.”

I have a nickname.

I don’t want a nickname.

Especially not ‘Red’.

“Ignore him,” Stella tells me as she shuts the door behind him. “I think your accent is cool.”

“Thanks,” I sigh. I didn’t even think I had an accent, but I guess growing up in the south, I have a southern accent that I don’t realize around other southern people and now that I’m on the coast of California, I have an accent. I don’t want an accent- it makes me stand out.

“So, how’d you get in late? You must have some connections,” She tells me, plopping down on the bottom bunk. I take that to mean that the top bunk is mine so I throw my duffle back onto it and then lean against the bed post.

I don’t want to tell this girl that my uncle owns the school because that’s the top of the top of the food chain. He’s above the dean and the board and everything. That’s some major power and like I just said, I don’t want to stick out at all. I don’t want people to think that I have some higher authority over them, I just want to get through this and hopefully get some money out of it. “I was waitlisted,” I lie quickly.

“Lucky you,” She giggles. “Anyway, I can show you around campus if you want? Unless you want to unpack first. Penny had the closet, so you can have the closet.”

I assume Penny is the girl who hurt her ankle, who used to stay in this room. “I don’t have much to unpack,” I tell her honestly. “But I’m really tired, so maybe a nap first.”

“I like the way you think,” She smiles, going over to the desk and pulling out a notebook, she starts writing. I don’t want to be invasive, so I just clamber up to the top bunk and lay my head on the pillow. I’m so glad that my roommate isn’t evil and I actually kind of like her or I think I’d go insane. I want to unpack what little clothes I do have, but I’m way too tired after the week that I’ve had, and before I can even lift my duffle out of the bunk, I’m drifting off to sleep on the stiff twin sized mattress. No matter how uncomfortable, though, it beats sleeping in the back of my car.

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“This is the employee dorm, so all of the instructors and volunteers stay in there,” Stella explains a few hours later as we walk through the large campus. “And then next to that, there’s the Arena. It’s really just an auditorium, but it sounds cooler when people call it an arena. If you have a performance or you want to watch a performance, that all happens there in the Arena.”

“Do you perform a lot?” I ask her, knowing that I really hate standing in front of people to do anything, especially dance. I mean, I know that if I have to, I will, but I just don’t want to have to, I guess.

She shrugs. “It’s mostly voluntary. I mean, there are a few mandatory performances, but they aren’t frequent. Anyway, over there is the food court. They literally have any kind of food that you could ever dream of wanting, and if they don’t have what you want, they make it for you. It’s like having your own private chef. I come here every summer and every school year, so it’s a miracle that I’m not the size of a sumo wrestler by now.”

“How long are practices?” I ask her. “I got my schedule and it says that I have to be in the E building at eight, but it doesn’t say when it ends.”

“They usually last about four hours and then you get lunch and then another four hours, maybe five,” Stella explains. “There’s not really a definite time frame, but you always get lunch and dinner. Anyway, these are the dance buildings, D, E, and F. A through C are core class buildings, so you probably won’t have to go in there ever, considering this is a summer thing and we don’t do core classes in the summer. Every Friday, there’s a bonfire in the middle of campus, where there’s that big open area that we passed a little bit ago. Every Monday, we only have half of a dance day. I don’t know why, they just give us half a day off on Mondays and we get the weekends off too.”