Procrastinators on Stage (Chris Kendall/crabstickz fanfic) *unedited*

Part 20- I Don't Like Being Angry

“Oh, look, there she is. I thought she’d turn up sooner or later.”

“She works here, Rory, she’s bound to show up.”

“Don’t be snarky with me…”

“I’m not. It’s not my fault that you made me get up at six thirty in order for us to stand and wait for her like a pair of demented stalkers. Who knew that there was a six thirty in the morning?”

“I knew. As for being stalkers, you can speak for yourself… I bought you a coffee, didn’t I?”

“Hmpft. Starbucks spelt my name wrong. Now I can’t take a picture of the cup for a hipster post!”

“You’ve said it yourself that you’re a fandom blog, so shush.”

Long green pin curls of hair were now visible over the array of people around me. Kat stuck her pointed tongue out between her purple lips to Rory, who was looking at her best friend in distain. What were they doing here? From what I’d gathered from their conversation, they were waiting for someone.

As I barged my way through the gaps in the crowd, Rory caught my eye. Her chubby cheeks glowed as she smiled at me when I joined them in the cover of the alcove under the Wicked sign. “Morning, Jamie. Donut?” she lifted a brown paper bag up to me as she spoke, where an enticing smell of fresh donuts sourced from.

“Er, thank you,” I said as I accepted the bag, which I then just awkwardly held in front of me. I ran my fingers over my thumb ring restlessly at the pause in conversation.

“How’ve you been, Four?” Kat pressed me as I tried to move around them to the theatre, but they persisted to obstruct my path. “Where you alright yesterday?”

“Kat, don’t be so blunt. Something might have happened,” Rory scolded Kat with a tug on her arm.

Kat glanced down at her friend in confusion, but when she looked back up to me, she appeared more reserved. “Sorry. I meant to ask if you’re okay. So…are you? We only heard that you were ill; nothing specific.”

I shrugged sadly at them. “Some friends stuff came up the night before and I, er, got travel sick yesterday and couldn’t make it in… But enough about me, how did you do yesterday, Kat?” I forced a smile at them whilst keeping my jaw square. This was exactly the confrontation that I’d hoped to avoid by getting here early, and here I was anyway. It was nice to see these two, of course, but I couldn’t really deal with people right now. I had to get inside, plug my headphones into my iPod and get to work. I wanted to do that, rather than face my own thoughts.

“You don’t want to talk about it,” Rory stated with a nod. I felt confusion fill out my face as I eyed her. It hadn’t been a question from her, more of a statement of fact. Maybe she was psychic.

A half-smile contorted my mouth as half of me agreed with her.

“We just wanted to check that you were still alive and not hospitalised that’s all,” Kat explained. “Then tell you what happened yesterday so that you don’t hear it from the wrong person, offer you a donut, you know, just something.”

“I appreciate it,” I said truthfully. “What did happen? Who got through?”

“Three people got through,” Kat explained as she nursed her Starbucks cup between her hands. The name ‘Cath’ was written on the card in a loopy cursive, and she was attempting to hide that with her fingers. “Elinor, Twelve and Seven got through. Twelve and Seven are pretty close now, actually. They said that they want to get the main role of Elphaba and the understudy role. It’s sweet really.” Kat sniffed angrily as she took a long drink.