Hey, guys. I'd just like to take a quick moment to mention that I'm a very kid friendly person, and I don't swear much myself, but on occasion there will be a mild bit of swearing in this story. Nothing extreme or anything above like, PG-14 (?), just the odd bit here or there when the character calls for it.
Okay, keep reading :)
Lara's running late.
For all of two minutes, she sits in the middle of her bedroom, trying to decide whether or not she should take her mom's car. During those two minutes, her phone buzzes off the hook until Lara is forced to pick up the darn thing and read all the messages from Riley, who of course is ridiculously early to this cast meeting when she's always absurdly late for everything else.
dude are you coming?
They have food Foooooooddddd.
I think this is a party.
Duh, Lara says to herself, deleting that text.
Why don't you have an understudy?????? hahaha im a swing i get to play everything
THEY HAVE SCRIPTS ABORT ALL OTHER MISSIONS LARA THEY HAVE THE SCRIPTS HERE FOR US GET YOUR ASS DOWN TO THE THEATER PRONTO
There are four other texts other that, but Lara's phone is already face down in the carpet as she dashes to her closet. Lara sadly reflects on the fact that she has no clue what to wear because she normally doesn't care, but she wants to make a good impression.
Lara starts to panic. She eventually settles for a ratty faded pink sweater over her paint-splattered jeans, and only just remembers to grab a hair tie and her phone on the way out of her room.
Getting the car is a whole new problem. Lara's mom is sitting in front of the television, watching some loud, obnoxious reality TV show that gives Lara a bad case of the chills. She sneaks around the kitchen and grabs the keys from the counter, then dashes from the kitchen to the front door. Lara swings the front door open hard as she simultaneously shoves her feet into her boots.
"MomI'vegotthisthingatthetheaterI'mtakingthecarbebackintwohours!" Lara shouts, scooting out the door and closing it before her mom can finish calling her name.
Lara pulls out of the driveway faster than she intends to, but from sixteen years of being with her mom she knows that the woman won't be bothered to get up and go after her. Lara knows she also won't call her father. Yet.
In typical Lara-luck, all the people who have yet to go home after work are now crowding the streets. Lara regrets pulling onto one of the smaller roads almost as soon as she does it: it's completely packed with cars and there's no bigger road to turn off on until the theater itself, by which time there would be no point.
It's twenty past seven when Lara's trudging her way to the rehearsal rooms. Her feet hurt from jamming them into her shoes, and she's really wearing the wrong jeans to be carrying both house and car keys in her pockets.
Her mood lightens considerably as she hears loud, familiar music: they're working their way through one of the playlists of showtunes Lara had made for one of her theater classes here. It's one of the livelier ones, one that Lara had struggled with because she hadn't been energetic at all at the time, but it had been a class requirement. So Lara had went around libraries collecting cast recordings to pull songs off of: she'd figured that was considerably less illegal than downloading them off the internet, and that was only for a few songs that she didn't already have in her massive (and expensive) iTunes collection.
It's not a typical party, Lara can tell that much as soon as she walks in the door. For one thing, there's three teenage boys in a corner completely jamming out to Today 4 U, which is a rare sight anywhere. And for another thing, while there are a few foods on a table, no one's touched any of the more snack foods. And most of the soda is undisturbed.
Lara discovers why within the minute: Riley literally comes out of nowhere, grabbing Lara by the elbow and swinging her around.
"Isn't this amazing?" Riley says breathlessly. Lara opens her mouth to answer, slightly bemused when Riley continues before she can get a word out.
"I mean, did you see all the press that showed up outside today? Like, wow! Wow! And I finally Googled the composer and book writer, and they're famous. Like really, really famous. Famous! I mean, they only wrote one thing for this competition a few years ago, but do you know how many awards and nominations they got in that competition? I mean-"
"Alright, that's enough!" Flynn whoops, diving between the girls. "Don't fear, Lara dear! I'll save you!"
Lara giggles. "Did you just rhyme?"
"Gross," Riley sighs.
Flynn moves closer to Lara, pretending to cover his mouth as he mock whispers, "So, how many times did Riley use the words 'I mean'?"
Riley blushes and looks as though she's about to slug Flynn. Lara decides that that's probably not how they want to start the show off.
Lara's ready to have to call Annabell to get Riley to stand down, but as soon as she takes Flynn by the shoulders and moves him behind her, Riley relaxes.
"I'm sad!" she proclaims. "I wanna eat junk but we're having a read through tomorrow."
Riley pouts.
That explains the food, Lara thinks.
Flynn disappears, and Riley huffs. "I wanna talk to the people in charge," she says impatiently. "They're all in the office talking to parents."
This is news to Lara. "What for?"
Riley's voice drops to a whisper, and Lara has to lean in closer to hear her. "Apparently there's some dark stuff in the show. Nothing explicit, just dark. I think they wanna make sure all the kids' parents are okay with it before we get started."
Lara says nothing. She wonders how dark dark is. She wonders if getting this role was a good idea.
Lara ends up spending the next twenty minutes talking to some of the kids, who are all excited beyond belief and end up trying to out sing one another. Lara then joins in their loud groans of protest as nearby, Flynn makes another smart remark to Riley, and the girl grabs his neck and plants a sloppy kiss on him.
Flynn runs off shouting and wiping his mouth, and Riley collapses to the ground with laughter.
That's when the adult intervention starts. Up until that point, the grownups had been in their own little corner, no doubt drinking wine that someone had bought as a present. One of the women walks over to talk to Riley. The group of kids snickers at this, and within a heartbeat the woman's heading for them.
"Bye," Lara says, standing up and getting away as fast as she can. No one comes after her, but Lara keeps going until she almost runs into the opening door.
Lara takes a quick step back, out of the door's swinging rage. The crowd of parents come through, and Lara doesn't have to look hard to see that some her the other teenagers have moms or dads among them.
Lara wonders if they sent her parents a note.
Lara wonders if her parents had bothered to read the note.
Probably not.
They probably didn't even know that she'd been cast. Lara had left the cast list on the dining table that afternoon, but she'd found it in the trash an hour later. She highly doubted that it had been read.
There's the sound of scraping chairs, and one of the writers rises up above the crowd, clearing his throat.
You can come up with as many false stereotypes as you want, Lara thinks wryly, but it's kinda true that theater people are always talking.
It takes a while for everyone to settle down, but when they do, the writer grins.
"Hi," he says, eliciting a laugh.
"I'm Adam Holland," he says. "You can call me Adam. Or you can call me Holland. Your choice. I'm one of the composers. The other composer is my pal Steven here. You can call him Walker."
Lara can just see a familiar-looking head of hair standing right in front of Mr. Holland, waving.
"And," Mr. Holland continues, "the lovely writer of our book is finally able to join us tonight. That's Kerry Gates by the corner. I think she's trying to hide."
Laughter erupts again, and Lara lets out a small grin.
"Between the three of us, we don't really have much to say. Congratulations on getting the roles. We know we've been telling all the casting people to with hold information from you guys, but we didn't want to see people preparing for their character, if you get what I mean. So thanks for dealing with us, advance thanks for bringing our words to life, and just thanks for..."
Mr. Holland runs out of steam, frowning slightly.
"Thanks!" he cries. "We wanted to let you guys have a happy moment before all the stress of putting the show together comes around. Your director would like me to tell you that the first read through is tomorrow at four thirty, in this room. He's supposed to be up here saying a few words, but he couldn't make it. So thank you again for coming, believe me, we know it's a school night, so you can go home in a minute. But first... oh, one soda won't kill you."
Someone passes Mr. Holland a glass, and Lara sees people converging on the drinks. Flynn scoots by, placing a cup of Coke in her hand and disappearing before her fingers are fully wrapped around the glass.
"Everyone has alcohol?" Mr. Holland calls. "Or soda?" he adds hastily as one of the parents shoots him a nasty look. "Okay, what are we toasting to?"
The room fills with shouts of suggestions. Lara's normally not one to contribute to loud group discussions, but when Mr. Holland's eyes sweep in her direction, something inside of her urges her to open her mouth, raise her voice and say, "Theater!"
Mr. Holland's eyes lock with hers for a split second, but Lara somehow knows without a doubt that her word reached his ears. He smiles in her direction, raising his glass. "To theater!"
The room echoes with the word, but Lara keeps her mouth closed until the glass is at her lips and the bubbles are searing her throat going down.
Lara doesn't stay around to wait for Riley or Annabell or anyone to say goodbye, or to see Mr. Holland finish his glass, pass it to someone on the ground and topple off his chair.
She has to go home.
She's stayed too long.
Well, how was it? Addition to the writer's note at the front, Riley's little text message swear is the most extreme swear that will ever be in this story. And that won't show up often. I don't know what rating this goes under because a) I've had a highly censored life and while I'm not uncomfortable with it, most of my media tends to be like PG-13 so I have no clue what everything above that falls under and b) I remember the good old days when I was a kid and movies like Killing Daddy, which I believe is PG-14, would have been like PG-17, so I have no clue what goes where nowadays.
Oh, the evolution of society within a decade.
I love Killing Daddy (that phrasing is weird but I'm leaving it)
Also, I would like to give a huge thank you to everyone who has read this, is reading this now, or will read it in the future. I don't normally check my views but this morning I had 14 and I was oh okay that's great and then this afternoon I had 41. I still don't know how to react to that. Like what. Thank you so much. You have no clue how much it means to me that that many people have taken an interest in this story. :) Love and hugs to everyone.
Hope you all have a great weekend!
P.S. Don't be afraid to critique if there's anything you don't like. :)
EDIT: So I've been playing around, and have started making the cast of the show within this story in The Sims. That up there (or down there, or on the side, I don't know) is Lara, and I'll be coming back adding pics to the chapters because I always have a strong visual image of my characters and would like to share them :)