This is so incredibly lame! The only chance I have to go shopping for my parents, and both of my friends are ditching me. I slam my stuff into my locker.
"Whoa, don't freak out, Miri," Nora says. "You can still go shopping without me."
I shake my head. "Laurel got detention again. Mrs. Kammerer caught her using her earbuds during class for like, the third time or something."
Nora frowns at me, and I can tell she really feels bad. "I'm sorry Miri, but the play is next week and the set crew seriously needs help." She tilts her head. "We'll go over the break sometime, okay?"
"Promise?"
Nora reaches forward, and I hold up my hand for a play, two slaps back and forth and a fist bump. "You know it," she says.
"Thanks."
Nora smiles big. "You know who's on the set crew, don't you?"
"The sexiest hot Asian chick at our school?"
"Well, besides me." Nora raises her eyebrows seductively. "Andrew Ohlerking."
"Drew's gonna be there?" Suddenly I don't care about shopping anymore.
"Yeah." Nora doesn't bother to keep her voice down. "You just try to tell me you don't want some of that."
I don't even have to think about it. I've got until six thirty to do whatever I want. "I'm so there."
"Then let's not waste another nanosecond." Nora leads the way down the hallway and out to the Quad, gabbing the whole way. We cut across to the theatre building and follow a crowd of drama kids inside. The second we go through the door, I know this is going to be a fun time. Someone put "The Kill" by 30 Seconds to Mars on the auditorium speakers, and it's loud.
The set looks amazing. An actual ship deck on a rotating wooden frame in front of a backdrop. All it needs is the paint.
The guy in charge puts me on the backdrop, blue sky and darker blue ocean waves. Someone is already using the paint roller on the boring sky blue, so I grab a brush and the darker blue paint and get to work on the water. I make it look just like the waves in the mural that Jimmy did in Balmy Alley.
The backdrop is huge. By the time five o'clock rolls around, I've barely finished a third of the ocean. And nobody's come to look at it, including Drew, who keeps walking back and forth across the front of the stage. He's working on one side of the rotating frame. The side that's facing out toward the auditorium.
Then the dude working on the sky gets close enough to actually notice what I'm doing. He takes one look and shouts out, "Hey Lesmeister, come here! You gotta see this."
I drop my arm and try not to smile. The guy in charge, I guess his name is Lesmeister, he struts across the stage from the front, and Drew and a few others follow behind him. I try to act cool, but I end up staring at Drew and getting blue on my jeans.
"What is this?" Lesmeister asks.
I shrug and state the obvious. "The ocean?"
"Who told you to paint these wacky waves?"
Suddenly five people are all staring at me like I just drowned a kitten in my paint can. "Nobody," is all I can manage to say.
"Tanner?" Drew holds his hands up at Lesmeister. "What's wrong with her waves?"
"What's wrong?" Tanner Lesmeister says. "What's wrong is that the play is next week, the set was supposed to be finished today, and nobody can help her finish this now, since she made it look like a cartoon."
Jimmy's waves are not a cartoon! My face instantly goes all hot, but in front of all these people, especially Drew, I hold my temper. "I can finish it today," I say.
"Not when we all leave in an hour," Drew says, but he's stepping forward, and suddenly I can't see anything else but his black emo hair, his skinny jeans and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus hoodie, and the ring in his lip. "Here, show me how, and I'll help you finish it," he says, and I melt into a puddle.
Author Note: Hey! I wrote this a super long time ago. What are some popular songs I could use?