"Okay! Today we're going to pick out monologues for our auditions for the winter play!" Mr. Jet announced, marching into class with a certain pomp and circumstance about him.
"But Mr. Jet! The Homecoming Dance is next month! How can you expect us to pick out a dress, find a date, make plans and memorize a whole monologue?" A freshman whined, I hadn't learned her name yet even though that's all we had been doing for the past few weeks, that and improvisation games.
"It's called multitasking. I'm going to give you two weeks to memorize your monologue and even if you don't want to be in the play you still have to memorize a monologue and it will be a grade. Depending on how well you perform your monologue will determine what part I place you but you do get to give me a list of preferred roles but I get final say," he finished with a grin. Charly raised a confident hand into the air. "Yes, Charly," he called.
"What play are we doing this semester?" she asked, trying to hide the excitement. Mr. Jet's face brightened up.
"I'm so glad you asked, this semester I wanted to try out a challenge. I hope you all want a challenge because this semester we're doing Shakespeare!" he exclaimed. A few soft groans echoed through the room but Emma started to do small first pumps above her head with a brilliant smile. Both she and Charly were excited.
"Which one?" whispered Emma with the utmost excitement.
"I don't think I'll reveal that till - oh you know what I'll just tell you! We're doing 'Much Ado About Nothing'!" Emma squealed, no one and I mean no one had been more excited than her. I couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm.
"Alright, I need all the girls to separate themselves off into groups of three and then all the boys can just be their own group. I'll hand each group a set of monologues that you will read and then choose. Go and circle around with your group and I will drop off the monologues with you." Almost instantly Emma and Charly seized each other's arms, it made me smile. Charly looked at me, her blue eyes shining and waved me over to them.
"Come on Mariah we need a third," Emma persisted. I gave Darik a quick glance, as he went to sit by the rest of the guys. It had been a few weeks since I got hit in the shoulder and we had our semi emotional chat and the funny thing was that ever since we had talked I felt funny, almost as if I had been attracted to him but every time I did feel something like that, memories would dance around reminding me that I had no right to happiness and the feeling went away for a while.
I grabbed my chair and moved over to Emma and Charly who already had some of the monologues in their hands, their eyes moving over the words, contemplating if the monologue would be a good one. The rest of the monologues were on the floor, I picked one up that was very long and then immediately put it back. Picking up the whole pile I searched for the shortest one but the shortest one had still been a whole page long. I guess it didn't matter since I didn't want to be in the play but I didn't want a bad grade either.
The short one I had picked up had been a dramatic monologue about a girl talking to her sister, and the audience would find out at the end that her sister was dead and that the person giving the monologue had been talking to a gravestone the whole time. A sharp pain seized my chest and my breathing pattern had picked up a quicker pace. I knew that if I didn't get control of my body I'd make a scene. My eyes found a poster on the wall and focused on it, reading the words over and over again until the pain had subsided enough for my breathing to slow down.
Taking my eyes off of the poster and back to our group, thankfully neither Emma or Charly had noticed, both of them were invested in different monologues. I didn't want to do the depressing monologue since only reading it had caused a reaction but it had been the shortest one and my memorization skills weren't what they used to be so it would be the one I chose. I held onto the paper and read it over again, each time thinking back to before.
"Is that the one you're going to do?" Emma asked. Meeting her eyes, I nodded and showed it to her. She read it, and her face softened.
"Wow, a dramatic one, those are difficult but I have a feeling that you'll be really good at it," she commented. A short purge of fear sprang through me, did she know? I decided to play it cool.
"Really? What makes you say that?" I asked, keeping my voice level. Emma shrugged and then looked back at my monologue then back at me.
"I don't know, it just seems like you'd be good at doing something dramatic," she replied. So she didn't know, relief went through my body. How could she have known? I chastised my anxiety for it's stupidity and continued reading.
"Thanks, I think I'm just going to do backstage stuff, not really an actress Darik persuaded me to do this," I rambled.
"I understand, a lot of people here go for backstage but then there are people like Charly and I who love to act and we aren't too bad at it either but before you graduate I think you should do at least one play but only if you're feeling up to it, we don't need another repeat of last year." Both Emma and Charly shuddered, but Charly's face went ghostly white.
"Everyone was on stage and Charly's partner had forgotten his line, which in turn made her forget her own line and they all stood on the stage for a good few minutes just looking at each other," Emma answered.
"It was horrifying," Charly's voice went hollow.
"How did you get over that?" I asked her intrigued. If that were me, I would never go on stage or outside ever again.
"Acting is something that I love to do and I had one bad, awful, terrible experience, but that doesn't mean every performance is going to be like that plus, when you love something you don't just give it up because of one bad thing you have to keep going," she responded. She sounded like an inspirational poster; but you could tell Charly loved theater.
"Wow, thank you Dr. Charly," Emma added with a slow bow. We all let out a small chuckle and they went back to choosing their monologues and continued to read mine trying to memorize it and desensitize myself.
A little while had passed when I got the weird feeling that someone was watching me, my eyes acted out of instinct and looked to meet the person who had been staring. Darik looked at me with a soft gaze of something that I hadn't seen him wear before, quickly I looked back down to my own monologue and furrowed my eyebrows together.
"We are out of time, I hope you chose your monologue because this was the only day to pick them. Okay, pack up." Stuffing my monologue into my backpack, I risked another glance up to Darik, who had his eyes trained on his monologue. I picked up my chair then stacked it with the rest of the chairs.
"What monologue did you choose?" I asked him as he stood next to me.
"I picked a romantic one," he responded. I smiled smugly at myself. "What's with the smirk?" he asked.
"Nothing, I just - I had a feeling that you would pick something like that." My comment didn't satisfy his curiosity.
"Why?" he asked, still wearing a casual grin.
"Because it just seems like something you'd pick, I don't know," I responded.
"Well what did you pick?" he asked, changing the subject.
"The shortest one I could find and even then it's still pretty long," I replied, with a twinge of anxiety lining my voice.
"Don't worry about it, if it makes you feel better we can read to each other during our free period. Sound good?"
"Yeah, I'm going to need all the help I can get. I don't want a part but I don't want a bad grade either," I explained, just as the bell rang. Students began to file out of the classroom and into the halls.
"No, I understand, after your third period meet me in the library and we can practice together okay?" he asked. I nodded then walked on to English were we received Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, the first book we would be reading as a class. The guys groaned and so did some of the girls but deeply I was excited. I loved Northanger Abbey, it wasn't as good as Persuasion but still a good one. When the bell rang for that class to be over, I made my way to the Library.
"Hello Mariah, how are you?" Mrs. Thatcher greeted me as I came in, with classical music playing in the background.
"Hi Mrs. Thatcher, I'm good. Has Darik come in yet?" She smiled and nodded.
"He's over there, by the encyclopedias," she informed, pointing towards the back corner of the library..
"Thanks," I replied, then walked to the far side of the library and saw him sitting on the ground. He looked up at me as I came closer to him and smiled.
"Are you ready?" he asked. I pulled out my now crinkled monologue and looked at it.
"No," I muttered with a small smile. I glanced at his monologue and saw that it was just about two pages long, my mouth dropped slightly.
"How in the world are you going to memorize all that?" I asked,
"Oh this is nothing," he responded. "Let me see yours." Now feeling a bit bashful about my own, I held it closer to my body unwilling to show him.
"No, just trust me that it'll be hard for me to memorize."
"Alright, why don't you read yours out loud. It helps with memorization," he suggested.
"Fine." I pulled my monologue out from my chest and began to read it, like I would read anything else in the world. After only getting in a single sentence Darik stopped me.
"Mariah, you need to feel the words, it's all part of acting. Becoming this character and letting her words become your own."
"Okay, but I'm not sure how to do that," I confessed.
"It's easy, just pretend that you have a sister who you love so much and then she's taken away from you and you aren't sure what to do so you go to her grave and talk to her." His voice stopped and his face looked concerned. "Are you alright?" he asked softly.
"Yeah, I'm fine why wouldn't I be?" I asked, slightly baffled. Darik reached over and swiped at something wet on my face. Crying. I had been crying without realizing it.
"I'm sorry I didn't mean to upset you," he apologized. I smiled. Don't let him see..
"You didn't upset me, I think it's allergy season or something. Honestly I didn't even know that tear was there," my voice rambled. "I think I understand, how about you do yours so I can see what you mean," I suggested keeping us on track.
"No, I want to hear you do it first," he argued. I stared at him unamused but he continued to look at me. I could tell through his facial expression that there was no way that he was going to give in, so with a defeated sigh. I began again, this time more emotional.
"You're getting there, just work on memorizing it and you'll do really well, what part are you going to go for?" he asked, I scoffed at him.
"None of them? Darik, the only reason I joined this class is because you told me that it'd be good for me to get out of my shell and everything," I quoted.
"Yeah but part of coming out of your shell is being on the stage," he countered. I knew he had a point but there was no way I'd let him know that he'd been on to me.
"Well you can forget about it, the only way I'd even consider going on to that stage is if one of the original actors got in some kind of accident and I was their only hope for the show going on," I retorted.
"You just jinxed yourself," Darik chuckled. I pushed his arm playfully.
"Oh come on you don't believe in that jixing stuff, do you?" I asked.
"No but it's fun to say and I swear if that should happen with this play I will laugh out loud in front of everyone," he promised. I narrowed my eyes.
"Fine, I want to hear that laugh nice and loud, your turn." I responded. Darik read his monologue to me. He was declaring love for a girl, describing her beauty and what this love did to him. My heart hammered, my breathing shallow, I tried to silence it and control it but I was its captive. When he finished, I blinked at him for a moment but before I could even respond to it the bell rang for lunch and together we got up and made our way to Avanna but Darik was quickly pulled away by a girl in our Drama class.
"What did you do during your free period?" Ava asked.
"Oh um Darik tried to help me with my uh acting skills," I laughed awkwardly because of the wording my brain had chosen for that sentence.
"Oh did he now?" she asked with a suspicious eyebrow raised. It took me a minute to realize what she had been insinuating and like that all my shields were up.
"Ava no, it's not like that at all! I hardly know your brother plus, I'm really in no position to be dating or even think about boys in that way. It really isn't in the cards for me right now so you can just stop that train of thought right there,"I told her assertively but her suspicious smile never faltered. Again, I felt the awkwardness rising so I decided to sip on some water that I brought with me.
"Uh-huh, sure. You know I wouldn't mind if you two dated, I like you and not that Darik tells me anything but I have a feeling that he likes you too." My throat closed up in mid swallow causing the water and my body to panic. Instead of spewing the water all over the table the water found its way out of my mouth and down my shirt, hopefully my hair would cover most of the spill.
"Ava!" I whispered. "Don't say stuff like that!" I snapped.
"Got ya! Oh I knew you liked him!" she cheered quietly. After taking a few long deep breaths, I looked over at her, forcing every ounce of seriousness I had.
"Ava I promise that I have no feelings for Darik and I will never have feelings for him." I had been completely honest about the first half, maybe one day I would have feelings for him but it didn't matter because I wasn't living in the future but in the present where I had no feelings for him. Right? Ava eyed me for a long while, I continued to hold my serious demeanour despite my own uncertainty. She sighed and took a swig of water, rolling her eyes
"I don't know what you're talking about Mariah, you're a great actor, almost had me convinced that you didn't like my brother in a romantic way." Rolling my eyes I opened up my lunch sack, pulled out a sandwich and started to eat it, there would be no getting through to Ava.
Ava talked about her classes as I ate and listened intently. She had so many interesting things to say about her classes it made me feel alone and boring. Not because I didn't have anything to say about my classes, Charlotte added all the interest I wanted but it made me miss my friends back in Missouri. I missed being involved in everything, I missed talking with them, laughing with them. Nothing felt right without them but I guess that this would have to be part of my punishment for what I did but sometimes I wish that time machines were real just so I could go back and watch and remember everything that happened and how happy it all made me feel.
"Hello? Mariah? Are you still here?" she asked. I blinked, forgetting about the memories and focused on Ava once again.
"Yes, sorry I was just thinking," I didn't want to get into specifics in fear of the watergates that lie behind my eyes but Ava's interest had been piqued.
"About Darik?" she teased.
"No! Why are you so adamant about Darik and I? I do not like him like that, I doubt if I ever will," I responded with more firmness in my voice. Before anything else could possibly happen Ava let out a loud hearty laugh but immediately held it back together again.
"I'm sorry, you'll understand one day. If you weren't thinking about Darik then what were you thinking about? You seemed really focused on it."
"Um, I was thinking about my life before this. I don't really want to talk about it but what were you saying about the kid in your P.E class?" I asked and she went off again but I paid attention. Darik eventually came back but the bell rang and we all went our separate ways.
Math was supposed to be Michael and I discussing our project and we did for most of the class period but then he started to ask questions about me. Nothing intrusive, just normal questions any interested person would ask. What my favorite color was, favorite food. Where I went to high school before here, which one I liked better. There was something about Michael that made him genuine, no one had asked him to be my friend, it had been purely because he had wanted to be. Sure Ava and Darik want to be my friend but they hadn't exactly sought me out. I had been so used to being sought out in my old school I had forgotten what it had been like being the new girl, the interruption in everyone's current flow.
"So maybe we could meet up one day and actually get the project done," he joked, well only half joking. Smiling, I nodded.
"Yeah definitely, maybe we could meet at the library, they've got tables outside and it's technically still summer so at least the weather will be nice," I offered. I didn't want him at my house, not because I was embarrassed, I still didn't quite trust him with something like that.
"Yeah that'd be fine, do you want to meet tomorrow after school then?" he asked. Glancing up at the clock, I nodded.
"Sounds good, I'll see you then," I smiled. The bell rang and I walked out the room and headed for P.E.
As I made my way, a hand had yanked me into the nearby bathroom. Inside stood Charlotte and a few other girls who were in her friend group. Looking around, I suddenly felt like I was in one of those teen movies where the new girls gets threatened by the school bully but this wasn't a teen movie.
"Is there something I can help you with Charlotte?" I asked through clenched teeth. Charlotte smiled then flipped her blonde hair away from her shoulder.
"How nice of you to ask and actually that's why we brought you in here, I need a favor from you," she responded. I didn't speak, I was so done with Charlotte's little antics that I didn't have the energy to reply to anything she said.
"Well I've noticed that you've grown close to Ava and her brother Darik and I don't really like it. You see, I like Darik, I have since his family moved here Freshman year and here we are as Seniors and he still hasn't asked me out and you clinging to him, isn't helping." I was confused.
"Clinging? I'm not clinging to him, we're friends, friends hang out with each other. Besides I'm still confused on what you want me to do," I responded. Charlotte, still smiling, walked closer to me, I moved away from her until I hit a corner.
"Listen to me, I know what you did back in Missouri and unless you stay away from Darik and Ava Thatcher I will make sure everyone in this stupid school - including teachers know what you did and how," she whispered fiercely. Charlotte wasn't smiling anymore. Her brown eyes were narrow slits, her nose bunched up. Fear took over, I didn't want to lose my friendship with Ava or Darik but the fear of what happened at my last high school took over everything else.
"What am I supposed to do during class?" I asked, my voice empty, like a robot.
"Oh don't worry, I'll make sure you are separated, theater class is the only one I don't have control over but if I hear you've been talking with either of those two of your own free will, I'll post the pictures with the who, the how and the when then everyone will know. Do we understand each other?" she asked her eyes going back to their normal doe shape.
"But we're only friends, I don't see how my being friends with Ava or Darik prevents him from asking you out, if he likes you, he'll just do it, won't he?" I asked. Charlotte smacked her hand on the side of the wall, making it echo.
"You stop talking to Avanna and Darik Thatcher or I send an email with these pictures and the report to every single computer and phone in this school. Do we understand each other?" her voice hissed like a snake and I knew she meant business so I nodded.
Smiling again, she backed off and let me leave the bathroom. I ran to the P.E Locker room, sat in the toilet stall and cried while trying to maintain control over myself. I didn't want to hurt Darik, he didn't deserve to be hurt in any way neither did Ava but I just couldn't risk the same thing happening here like it did Missouri. I just couldn't. Finally gaining some self control, I changed into my P.E uniform and walked out of the locker room bracing the new found difficulty of my life.