A/N: Chapter Ten already! Sorry for the delay in uploading, had a busy week! hope you enjoy this chapter, and have a brilliant week :) Maddie xoxo
Shutting his eyes, Kael leant against the wall outside the drama studio. It was tiring being so enthusiastic, he thought, sleepily. After the enthusiastic drama rehearsal, he’d gone to the English Department (guided by Lucas) and had asked them to help with rewriting a script. They’d been extremely unenthusiastic. Kael had decided to rethink asking them to help.
Then, he’d gone home and researched about the play for several hours. His parents would have been shocked, had they been around to see it.
‘Hey Kael,’ someone said. His eyes opened to reveal Isis, smiling up at him. ‘Alright there?’ she inquired.
He nodded. ‘Yeah. Just, er, tired.’
‘Me too,’ she admitted. She looked at her feet as she said it, and Kael, following her gaze noticed that her shoes looked as if they were threatening to fall to bits at any second. He wondered why on earth she was wearing such a rubbish outfit: her jumper faded, her jeans with several holes, and worn in places. Then, for the first time, it hit him that she could well be extremely poor.
Looking at her again, he realised she must be. Who would wear those clothes unless they had no alternative? And he had judged her for it, looking down his nose at her in scorn. He felt a little bit sick at himself.
‘How are you?’ he blurted out, suddenly feeling sympathy for her, and not knowing how on earth to deal with that. Feeling sorry for someone? He wasn’t used to that at all.
Isis looked up at him, startled. Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘Alright, except from the tiredness,’ she replied. ‘I’m looking forward to the play.’
‘You don’t mind what I said about the play, then?’ he asked. ‘About changing it?’
‘Oh no,’ she answered, tucking her long hair behind one ear and smiling up at him. ‘I liked what you had in mind.’
‘Really?’ Kael was more than a little distracted by how beautiful she looked like that, her hair pulled back revealing the curve of her cheek and small, delicate looking ears. Oh dear. He was after her ears? Not good. ‘I thought you’d be cross with me for changing it too much.’
She shook her head, the hair falling back from where she had placed it by her ear. Kael was seized with an urge to tuck it back again. He clasped his hands behind his back, and ignored it. ‘I actually think you were really brave to suggest it,’ she told him. ‘I wouldn’t have dared. But I respect you a lot for doing that; I think it’ll make the play a whole lot better.’
Kael had never felt so proud before. ‘Good,’ he commented, not trusting himself to meet her eyes properly. ‘And er, sorry for what I did when I was drunk,’ he added.
The smile disappeared from Isis’s face. ‘Oh. You remember?’
He nodded. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight, unfortunately.’
She laughed. ‘I gathered that, actually.’
‘Sorry, he groaned. ‘I won’t be doing it again, I assure you.’
Isis peered into the drama studio, her hand reaching out to try the door. It made him want to smile; she wasn’t meeting his eyes, clearly more than a little uncomfortable at the recollection of what he had done whilst inebriated. ‘Locked,’ she said. ‘We’re early.‘ Turning to look at Kael, she tilted her head to one side. ‘Lucas said you went up to the English Department to ask about the script?’
Kael nodded. ‘Well, yes. It was, er, interesting.’
‘They’re not a very enthusiastic bunch, I’m afraid,’ Isis told him, leaning back against the wall next to him. Her small height made him feel taller and somehow protective of her.
‘I gathered,’ he commented. ‘They might as well have been wearing signs saying piss off on them.’
Isis laughed. ‘They’re a grumpy lot, actually. That’s why I decided not to do English, I couldn’t cope with how down they all were.’
‘I don’t blame you!’ Kael turned slightly to look at her. ‘What A Levels are you doing?’ For once, he actually cared about the answer. He found himself in the unenviable position of wanting to know absolutely everything about the girl leaning against the wall next to him, and it was a little bit alarming.
‘Classics, History and Drama,’ she told him.
‘Classics, huh?’ Kael remarked. ‘Isn’t that exceptionally dull?’
Isis grinned. ‘Well, it’s alright. I know a lot about it, thanks to my mum.’ For a moment, her eyes grew dull at the mention of her mother. ‘She did a degree in Classics: she loves the ancient worlds and all their gods and goddesses.’
‘Hence your name?’ Kael asked.
Her head snapped up to look at him. ‘You know who Isis is?’
Feeling rather uncomfortable, Kael nodded. ‘Er, yes. Egyptian goddess, right? Of the sun and other things?’
Isis nodded, looking impressed. ‘No one ever knows that.’
‘Private schools teach you weird things,’ Kael said enigmatically. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters named after gods and goddesses too?’
Isis flushed. ‘Yes, actually. My mum always likes a themed set of names.’
Kael chuckled. ‘What are their names?’
‘I have a younger sister, Freya-’
‘Oh- Norse goddess? Something Viking?’
Isis nodded. ‘That sort of thing.’ She paused. ‘And I have an older brother, Seb.’
‘Seb? Not short for Sebastian, I take it?’ Kael asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s another Egyptian god- just Seb. He always gets asked if his name’s Sebastian, and it pisses him off no end.’
‘I’ll remember that when I meet him.’ When he met him? That just sounded stalkerish. Well, if that didn’t creep Isis out, he didn’t know what would. She didn’t seem bothered at all, actually. She was gazing at the wall before her, a look of intense concentration upon her face. ‘Isis? You alright?’
She snapped out of it, turning to look at him excitedly. ‘Kael, what if we didn’t use the English Department?’
‘I had thought we probably wouldn’t,’ Kael told her, slightly amused at her excitement. ‘But what would we use instead?’
‘Well.’ She paused, clearly building up to her pierre de resistance. ‘You know how well the improvisation went?’
Kael nodded, not sure where she was going with this. ‘Yes, it did go well.’
‘What if we just improvised together to come up with the scenes?’ she asked, looking pleased with herself. ‘We all know the general story, and if we looked at the original scenes, we could put the characters together, and then improvise…’
‘Oh, I see!’ Kael suddenly got it. ‘And then get someone to write it down as we do it- we could record it to make it easier? And then learn that?’
Isis nodded. ‘That would be so much more natural!’
‘It could really work.’ Kael was astonished at how enthusiastic the pair of them were getting. He wasn’t feigning this in the slightest, he was actually seriously excited. And looking at Isis, beaming up at him, almost as close as she was that time he’d tried to kiss her, other parts of him were excited too…
Thankfully Mrs Robson took that moment to walk past them, into the drama studio, so Isis turned away. Phew. Kael didn’t think she’d be very impressed by that.
Isis went into the studio feeling rather strange. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said to Kael that she respected him for attempting to make the changes: she really had discovered a newfound respect for the boy, as he bravely suggested it. However, that friendly conversation had been something else entirely. He had been chatty, amusing… pleasant. Not what she’d come to expect of him at all.
As they sat down, Kael caught her eye, and smiled, gesturing his head to Mrs Robson. She nodded, and, the pair of them getting up again, headed over to her. Quickly explaining their master plan, they waited, stood next to each other with matching enthusiastic grins.
Mrs Robson surveyed them with a surprised looking expression. ‘You know,’ she said, slowly, ‘I was actually rather impartial to the idea of getting it rewritten, but that‘ -she paused, looking at them both in turn- ‘is actually a rather marvellous idea. Let’s get started right away!’
Looking at each other, stunned with their success, Kael couldn’t resist pulling Isis into a celebratory hug. His arms tightening around her as she quickly put her arms around his middle, he bent his head, feeling the tickle of her hair against his chin.
She pulled away far too quickly for his liking; he could still feel the warmth of her in his arms as he’d held her for those few seconds.
‘Brilliant,’ she said, beaming up at him. ‘That’s brilliant!’
Looking over at the others, who were slowly filing in, Isis headed over to Lydia to tell her the good news. After such a short time, she was already becoming close to the bubbly, unashamedly likeable girl, and had actually found that they shared a lot in common.
‘That’s fantastic!’ Lydia told her, leaping up to hug her. ‘I’m so relieved I won’t have to struggle over those words: thank goodness.’
Isis grinned. In fact, she couldn’t stop grinning for the rest of the day. Even on the long journey home, she kept thinking about the play, and her enthusiasm kept her warm despite the chilly wind.
When she got home, almost skipping through the door, she beamed at Seb and Freya. ‘How are you both?’
‘Not as happy as you, by the looks of it,’ Seb said, with a smile, giving her a one armed hug as he expertly stirred something over the hob. ‘What’s got you all cheery?’
‘The play,’ she told him. ‘It’s so wonderful to be in it.’
Seb laughed. ‘What adorable little sisters I have,’ he commented, looking over at Freya, devouring a book in the corner.
‘Don’t you just, adorable brother,’ Isis replied, reaching up to ruffle his hair. ‘I’m going to go check on Mum, alright?’
Seb nodded. ‘Okay.’
Heading into her mum’s room, Isis kept her bright smile on her face. ‘Mum, how are you today?’ she asked, cheerily.
Her mother peered up at her from beneath the covers. ‘Oh. Alright,’ she murmured. ‘What about you?’
Telling her all about her day, Isis moved about the room, opening a window, tidying bits and bobs away, and was relieved to see her mum actually smiling. It seemed that recently, she’d started to improve a little, actually getting out of bed more frequently when left alone with Freya whilst Isis was at rehearsals, and so she was feeling hopeful.
Isis glanced down at her mother’s hand, resting lightly on the bedside table as she sat up in bed. Around her thin wrist, a heavy silver watch hung loosely: Isis’s father’s watch which her mother had kept on since the funeral. It had stopped ticking years ago, but it remained on her mother’s increasingly frail wrist, a reminder.
‘Dinner!’ called Seb. Isis looked at her mother, wondering.
‘Mum?’ she asked, cautiously.
‘Yes?’
‘Would you like to come and eat dinner with us today?’ Isis asked, quickly, before she could chicken out of it. ‘If you’d like to.’
Her mother gasped, and moved as if to shake her head. Isis fixed her eyes upon her, imploring her to be herself once more, to come out and to be a normal mother once more. Her mother looked back, biting her lip in a way that Isis seemed to have inherited from her.
‘I… I don’t know if I can, Isis,’ she murmured. ‘I want to, but it scares me out there, and he’s not there.’
Seeing her haunted eyes, Isis stumbled back. ‘Okay, er, I’ll-’
Her mum got out of bed, in a movement so quick that Isis almost missed it. ‘Would he want me to be in here?’ she asked, seemingly asking herself. Pacing up and down, she didn’t meet Isis’s eyes, and instead twisted the watch around her wrist, again and again and again and again.
Backing out of the room, Isis left her. When she got in this sort of state, there was very little that she could do. Quietly making her way back to the kitchen where Seb and Freya would already be eating, she sighed. She had no idea what to do with her mother, but she felt guilty for leaving her in her room like that. Sitting down next to Seb, as he wordlessly handed her a plate of food, Isis smiled, but her mood wasn’t nearly so cheery as before.