A Rising Star

Chapter 22 - Reading Through

Wait.

I knew that face.

It was a mean face. A glaring one. A spoiled one.

Natalee's.

I sighed, and then sighed again when I realized the only seats still available were surrounding Carter and me.

Natalee pulled out the chair across from me and flung her script onto the table with a loud thwhack. She slumped into her chair and crossed her arms. She finally looked up.

And took a double-take.

Here we go...

"What are you doing here??"

I paused, but then decided to answer her. "I'm playing young Eponine. I heard you got Cosette!" I added cheerfully, hoping to keep her from getting mad at me for whatever it was I did to get on her bad side at auditions. "Congrats!"

Natalee only scoffed at me. "Whatever. You don't even get a single line, but I get a whole entire song to myself. At least the director recognized my talent. By listening to one line of my song. I wasn't even at callbacks, they thought I was so perfect for it! Also, everyone's gonna like me more because I'm the good character, and you're not. No one's supposed to like you! When-"

"Hold on, missy, what's that got to do with anything? Hailey is really good!! They're not supposed to like her character, sure, but they're gonna LOVE her performance!!" Carter countered harshly.

"Geez. I'm just warning her that if people boo when she bows, it's probably not her fault the director didn't like her," Natalee responded casually.

"Just ignore her," Carter muttered in my ear. I didn't respond, not knowing how to.

Robert, Lizzie and Jacob all strode to the side of the table that was behind me. I swiveled around in my seat to face them as they all attempted unsuccessfully to grasp everyone's attention.

After about ten minutes, they managed to. Jacob took this as a cue to sit over at the piano, which I had only just realized was there. I was pretty sure that it was the same shiny, tan, wooden one he used at the audition.

"Congratulations on making the cast of Les Miserables!" Robert regarded us. "You competed against over six thousand actors for exactly fifty roles! Now, here's what we'll be doing today: Jacob (you remember him?) will slowly play the songs and whoever was cast as the character with that line will sing it. If you don't know the tune, just wing it. The idea is to get familiar with it; we'll work through it later. Got it?"

"Got it!" we all said in unison.

And that's exactly what we did. We started at the beginning and sang through it all. Though I already knew the story, the music had tears welling up in my eyes that I had to blink back to avoid embarrassment.

I wrote my name on the inside of the front cover and saw a list of characters. I highlighted Young Eponine and wrote Carter's name next to Gavroche; I wrote down the rest of the cast's names next to their characters as I figured out their names when reading. 

When we got to the end, we all applauded. We then worked through a few of the songs, though I wasn't in them.

They worked on harmonies next, and tended to be working hardest on At the End of the Day. By six, they had it just about perfect.

I left feeling like I had just seen a wonderful performance, though I was slightly sad that I hadn't gotten the chance to sing anything.

"Great work today, everyone! Tomorrow we'll work through both Look Downs, Castle on a Cloud and maybe start blocking! Thank you!" Robert said.

And so I walked back outside, into the snowy rain. I brushed Natalee away when she tried to talk to me, knowing I wouldn't care about whatever she had to say. I mostly talked with Carter until he got into a blue minivan with who must have been his mom and drove off. I waved as he sped away.