A Single Second

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 24

DANIEL

On Thursday morning, Daniel dressed, said his goodbyes to Destinee, and headed out the door. There were more auditions today. He groaned inwardly.

There were only three parts they had to fill today, but that still meant a lot of work. He was also seeing people they'd auditioned yesterday. Even though they hadn't gotten their desired part, they were still good enough to use as extras. Daniel was hoping to use some of them as the King and Queen's knights. Maybe a few jurymen if he was lucky.

Looking down at his paper, Daniel saw that he only had to fill the parts of Alice's sister, the mouse, and the cat today.

The cab deposited him at the curb and Daniel hopped out and headed inside. He could hear a lot of noise as he walked into the auditorium. On stage, Judy, the music coordinator, and Greg, the choreographer, were busy showing Tom what they had in mind. When Tom saw Daniel, he hushed them and signaled for Daniel to come on stage.

"Looks good so far," Daniel said with a smile.

Tom shook his head. "Yeah, well unfortunately, things aren't good at the moment."

"What happened?"

Tom shifted. "We lost Alice."

"What?"

"She was in a car accident yesterday. A couple of blocks from here."

Daniel thought back to yesterday and remembered the blonde girl and the wrecked cars. "I saw that."

Tom's eyes widened. "Yeah, well now we got no Alice. We don't even have auditions set up."

Daniel stuffed his papers into his brief case and shrugged. "Well, I guess all we can do is set them up and see who comes."

"Yeah, but we need a girl who can dance, sing, act, you name it. We were supposed to have a cast pretty much organized by Monday. Now, we don't even have an Alice."

Daniel scratched his chin. "Can't think of anything else to do."

"Me neither," said Tom grumpily. "I got the word out this morning that we're holding auditions on Saturday."

"Saturday?" Daniel asked. "Our day off?"

Tom shrugged. "Have any better ideas?"

And so, Daniel's day starting off bad enough, it was sure to get worse. They only had five people show up for the part of Alice's sister and ended up settling on Opal Brooks, a substandard dancer with a poor voice, but Daniel knew well enough that she didn't have a singing part. Her time in the play would be only about twenty minutes total.

Gina Pond and Rachel Davis were both promising and both could play the mouse easily. Daniel and Tom agreed to call them back tomorrow for a second audition.

Sterling Bryce was chosen to play the cat for the simple reason that he had a deep voice, a large smile with pearly white teeth (a must for the cat) and could sing like a deep-voiced angel. His dancing wasn't great but Greg said that he could work with him.

The call-backs from yesterday came up one by one. Daniel had only called back the ones that could both sing and dance and therefore knew that

they would all be satisfactory. They got seven people to play the Card Knights and three for the singing jury.

It was a less exhausting day than the previous had been, but Daniel still found himself tired when he came home later that day. He remembered laying down on the couch for just a moment, but when he opened his eyes, he found Destinee shaking him, the windows smoky grey with orange rays crossing the sky.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. "How long have I been out?"

Destinee shrugged. "I don't know. I just got home."

Daniel looked at his watch. "It's almost six! Why weren't you home sooner?"

"The audition at Gambiller."

Daniel rubbed his head. "Right. Of course. How did it go?"

Destinee smiled. "I got in. Private lessons with Fleur de La Fontaine every Monday at three."

"Wow, that's great."

"Yeah."

"So, it took you this long to get home?"

"No," said Destinee casually. "Tiffany asked if I'd walk home with her to meet Georgina, her nanny. We had ice cream. And then I came home. I tried to call but you didn't answer. I assumed auditions were taking longer than you thought."

"No, no. I uh..."

"Fell asleep?"

"Yeah."

"You want me to make dinner?"

Daniel looked toward the kitchen and saw, on the refrigerator, a menu for Thai food. "How about we celebrate your success instead?"

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