Behind The Curtain

Chapter 1 - Morning Adventure

There are two types of people in this world. The ones who enjoy having advantages over other people and take advantage of these advantages; and the ones who ignore the advantages and try to work there way through it on their own. I am the later.

Having an author for a mum is one thing, but having a playwright for a dad is something else, especially if all you want is to be an actress. Yes, I could tell my parents and have them cast me as a supporting role in my dads new play. Yes, that would open up plenty of opportunities for me in the world of theatre. But, no, I don't want that. I want to work for my career and not just have it handed to me, is there something so wrong with that. Which is why my parents think that I want to be a teacher, they just don't know that it would be a drama teacher, if I were to ever pursue that career. I will tell them... Eventually.

We moved to America over a year ago when my dads play went big over in New York, now we live in Florida, which is great but all my family live in England still so spending time with family either means we're going to attempt to video call grandma or we (as a family of three) are going to spend time together. Which if you ask me seems rather silly when we don't spend that much time apart. My parents both work from home, except for my mum's occasional trips to the publishing office (which she normally arranges during school time anyway) or my dad's occasional overnight stays down at the theatre on the night before the show (which is basically whenever there is a problem that doesn't quite fit the directors job description).

It's now the first week back at school (the first day to be precise), after the summer vacation. I was meeting Isabel out side the front gate so we could go collect our schedule together. She's been my friend ever since I got to the school over a year ago. She's honesty my only real friend, I mean yes, I talk to others but no one gets me like she does, and vice versa.

She isn't what you would call normal. From the outside she looks like your typical popular girl with the designer clothes and killer fashion sense and being rich has helped her to keep up with the latest fashion. But there is one thing that makes her better than the real popular girls at our school, Izy is actually a nice person.

"Oh. My God. What are you wearing?" she said to me as I approached her. The designer summer dress and high heal sandals she wore just didn't compare to my ripped jeans and T-shirt, and if I knew Izy, she was going to point this out.

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" I said. She gave me a raised eyebrow and I knew asking that question wasn't good for either of us. "Don't answer that." I added before we both continued to walk into the building.

"Okay so are you excited?" she said, and now I was lost.

"Yeah, totally. What for?"

She sighed before jumping in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. "We're now seniors!" she said, almost squealing. "We can now join the senior drama group. I already applied for head costume designer and now that Lexie Moore graduated it leaves the spotlight completely free and I'm taking it!"

Her excitement wasn't completely irrational. We had been excited about this for a while now, the normal drama group isn't exactly taken seriously because it's mandatory for certain students so it was pretty much a complete joke. But being able to join the senior drama group meant that in this big school, with a large amount of students, only the ones who actually wanted to be there, were. This meant the beginning to my acting career and the beginning to her fashion designing career, in a place where we would actually get to work together. How was I supposed to tell her that I wasn't sure if I was ready to tell my parents. Considering they meet after school for drama club I would need a perfectly good reason why I'm staying late every day.

"About that" I said, and she instantly recognized the look on my face.

"No, Elliot we are doing this, you are just going to have to find a way to be there without your parents asking questions. I don't care how you do it, but do it!" And that was all that was said on the matter.

We headed down to the main corridor to collect our schedules from the senior desk which was proven to be more difficult than I imagined. There were students everywhere. Finding the desk was one thing, getting to it was probably our biggest challenge yet.

Finally after pushing through people and almost knocking out a freshman we made it and got the envelopes with our names on it and quickly got out of there before we got trapped in by the parading sophomores.

Laughing at the morning adventure we just had, we made our way towards to back doors to sat on the steps together.

"I told you heals weren't a good idea" I said.

"Well they were a better idea than trainers" she said, eyeing my choice of footwear.

"How was your cruise anyway?" I asked as we sat on the top step, looking out at the football field.

"Fabulous. Almost as great as the guy I met there."

"Oh, do tell" I teased.

"His name is Ivan" she said. "He's Spanish. Way hotter than anyone I'll ever meet here."

"That's probably true"

We opened up our envelopes as we laughed.

"Oh gosh I've been put in Mrs Tuckers English" she said holding her hand over her mouth, which seemed a bit too dramatic but that's Izy for you "Well I've failed that class then" she laughed.

"They've messed up my schedule again!"

"Again?"

"Yes, again. I have a load of blank sessions which aren't supposed to be there. I'll have to head down to Principal Lockwood's office and have him fix it again"

"They did that last time"

"Yeah" I sighed "I'll go down there after school, my classes for today are fine so-"

"Cool, so what do you have first?" She interrupted a little to excited, even for her.

"Erm... I have calculus"

"Yay! So do I! Mr Harris?"

"Erm..." I said looking back at the paper in my hand. "Yep"

"Cool lets go" she said, linking her arm in mine, we walked down to the C block.