by Mia Archer
Yeah, that sounded pretty familiar. I took a deep breath. Shy but assertive.
I closed the gap between us. Took her hands in mind. Waited for Mr. Thompson to tell us to stop, but the word never came. Maybe he liked whatever we were doing. Maybe I’d been right in assuming I should just do what felt right up here.
I looked into her eyes. Searched them. Her mouth fell open and she looked like she was about to say something, but she kept quiet. Then I realized that we were on stage acting out a scene and it was my line. Not hers.
Stupid. There was method acting and then there was method acting.
“But we do,” I said.
Sarah turned away from me. As though she was afraid to meet my gaze. I noted that when she turned away from me she turned towards the imaginary audience so they’d be able to see the conflict written on her face.
It was a pretty good performance. Sure I hadn’t seen many performances considering I was new to this whole drama thing, but I thought it was pretty good all things considered.
“What happened last night was…”
Oh yeah. I had this. It wasn’t difficult at all to channel what had just happened on that couch and pour it into the scene.
“It was the most amazing thing to ever happen to me,” I said. “I didn’t know it could feel like that.”
Yeah. We were definitely talking about more than a scene we’d just blocked yesterday. From the way she turned back to me she seemed to realize it too.
It was also a little weird being up here onstage an having her being the one acting all reluctant when so far off the stage she’d been the one who was all for this while I’d been the one who was a little reluctant.
“Listen,” she said, pausing as though she was searching for the right words. “I dance with a lot of people at those things. It’s what I do. I’m a social person.”
Time to go for broke. Time to really sell it. I grabbed her and pulled her in. I had a moment to see her eyes go wide in surprise then my lips pressed against hers.
It was a brief kiss. Brief but intense. Her arms wrapped around me and we were falling back against the couch. I felt a moment of panic wondering if we’d miss the mark and I’d find myself slamming against the stage, but then I felt the threadbare cushions flattened by years of drama kids sitting on the thing, and maybe doing more than sitting which was sort of a gross thought.
We kissed for a moment. I wanted that moment to go on forever. I also worried about putting something like this in the scene.
What if Mr. Thompson decided he liked it? Sure it would be great to have an excuse to kiss Sarah daily at rehearsal, but it would also mean I’d have to do it in front of an audience and I wasn’t sure what to think of that.
I pulled away from the kiss. Looked up at her. Licked my lips. I was breathing heavily. I didn’t have to do much in the way of acting to show that I was out of it after that kiss. She scrambled my brain and I had trouble thinking of my next line.
Maybe that confusion was good though. Violet would be confused after a kiss like that. I needed to take it and run with it. Use my emotions and put them on display for the world.
That’s what Sarah taught me. The line finally came to me.
“You can’t tell me that what we did out there last night meant nothing,” I said. “I felt the way you pressed against me. I saw the way you looked at me. No one can fake being that interested in someone.”
“Cut! That’s enough!” Mr. Thompson’s voice rang out across the theater.
I turned to face him. It was made a little awkward because Sarah was still on top of me, but at the same time I wasn’t going to complain about having Sarah on top of me.
It felt good even if it was a little awkward having the drama teacher watching us like that.
Then another thought occurred to me. What if he didn’t like the performance? What if he hated it? What if I put it all out there and it turned out it was for nothing?
He regarded the two of us for a long moment.
“Neither one of you used any of the blocking cues I set up,” he said finally.
Sarah opened her mouth as though she was going to say something, defend us for not going along with the cues, but he held up a hand to stop her.
“And suffice it to say what you came up with just now was wonderful. Far better than anything I came up with. Where was this performance earlier?”
Again he looked between the two of us. Now there was a hint of a smile there. The angry and cranky Mr. Thompson who’d been on edge the entire time we were blocking this scene had disappeared.
Huh. I wondered if that was a routine he was putting on this entire time because he wasn’t happy with the performance we were giving him.
“I realize that the two of you might have a few things you’re working through right now,” he said.
There was an understatement. He’d obviously seen us making out from up in the lighting room but he was tap dancing around the issue. I wasn’t sure if that was a relief or humiliating.
“I trust that you’ll take that energy, though, and apply it to your performance like you did just now.”
I smiled despite myself. He liked it. He really liked it! It was amazing the rush I got when I felt that approval. That was the sort of thing I could get used to.
And in that moment I sort of understood why people would get so serious about this whole drama thing. If it felt this good getting approval from Mr. Thompson then what would it feel like getting that sort of love and approval from a whole audience of people?
Then something else hit me. He liked it, which meant we were going to have to keep doing this and incorporate it into a performance that we’d eventually do in front of an audience.
I wasn’t sure if I should be excited or terrified at the idea. I knew what I felt sandwiched between Sarah and the couch, but there was still that nagging doubt in the back of my mind wondering if I wasn’t making a mistake.
16
Sarah
“So there I was behind the stage holding onto Brandy’s legs for dear life. The only thing that’s keeping her from going over the edge and splatting on her dear Romeo in front of the entire assembly is everyone behind the scenes grabbing her and keeping her from going ass over teakettle,” I said.
There were appreciative laughs all around the table, but the reaction wasn’t nearly as good as it’d been last year when the story was still new.
Still, Chloe seemed to be enjoying the story. I dipped my fry into some ketchup and took a bite. It was an appropriate moment for a dramatic pause in the story.
I saw a couple of eye rolls at that, but they could go screw themselves. This might be an old story to most people sitting around the table, but it was new to Chloe and I was enjoying holing court here thank you very much.
“So what happened?” she asked.
I grinned and held the pause for another moment. It was important to have the right sense of timing in a moment like this.
“Come on Sarah,” Mike said. “You know how it ended. Brandy…”
I held up a hand to stop him. This was my story to tell, thank you very much, and I wasn’t going to be interrupted by the likes of Mike.
“You weren’t there Mike,” I said. “Remember that football was more important than drama last year?”
He looked down and muttered something I couldn’t hear under his breath. Probably a good thing I couldn’t hear whatever he said. The last thing we needed was to get in a fight.
There was a reason they called this the drama table, and it wasn’t just because it was a bunch of drama kids gathering and having lunch together.
“So we’re holding onto her. I’ve got her foot and a couple of people are holding onto this big ridiculous dress, only the dress starts to rip and tear.”
“No,” Chloe said.
I could see I was starting to get more people at the table over to my side. There were a couple of nods as people remembered the moment.
It had been disaster at the tim
e, but it was pretty funny looking back and thinking about it now. It helped that Brandy had graduated so there was no longer anyone to be embarrassed firsthand when we told the story.
“Yup,” I said. “One moment I’m holding onto her feet for dear life to keep her from falling through the stage dressing, and the next she’s going forward and there’s a big rip and no Brandy hovering over us on the ladder anymore.”
Chloe’s eyes were wide. I’m sure she was thinking about what it would feel like if something like that happened to her.
Heck, it was something I thought about from time to time. Every time you got up on the stage there was the risk that something really bad could happen. There was a reason everyone told everyone else to break a leg, after all.
“So what happened then?” she asked.
“I think there’s still a video of it somewhere,” Mike said. “Thompson takes videos of all the performances so he can go back and look at it later for notes, or show it to future drama classes.”
I giggled. I normally wasn’t a giggling person, but thinking about a video locked away somewhere in Thompson’s cabinet, the school wouldn’t spring for a digital recorder so he was still forced to use an ancient monstrosity that recorded stuff on equally ancient VHS tapes, that showed Brandy falling forward as she was ripped out of her dress.
“Brandy was fine,” I said. “At least she was physically fine. She didn’t hurt herself aside from some bruising…”
“Her ego on the other hand…” Mike said.
“What happened to her ego?” Chloe asked.
“Well let’s just say that when she fell forward with that dress ripping she ended up showing off a lot more to the audience than she probably intended to when she got involved in the play,” I said.
“You might say there was a full moon on the stage that night!” Mike said.
That was good for some more laughter. Even the people who’d been sitting back and rolling their eyes as I told the same old story again were starting to laugh now.
It was one of those stories that was hard not to laugh at once you really got going. Sure I felt bad for Brandy being humiliated like that, but I heard she was off in the theater program at whatever school she’d gone to so it’s not like it scared her off of performing forever or anything.
“I can’t believe it,” Chloe said. “I think I’d die from embarrassment.”
I fixed her with a flat stare and she blushed and looked down. She wasn’t doing that nearly as often these days, my little caterpillar was starting to become a social butterfly the more time she spent around a social group that wasn’t that youth group she was always going on about, but she still looked embarrassed from time to time.
No doubt she was thinking about the same thing I was. Brandy wasn’t the only person who’d embarrassed herself up on the stage in the past year, and our little moment of embarrassment had been a lot more recent.
Thankfully most people were being cool about it. People occasionally made kissyface noises when they walked past us, but a few well placed glares had mostly put a stop to that.
Mostly.
A chime told me that lunch was almost over. There were three chimes for lunch. One to tell you it was time to finish up whatever you were eating because it was almost time to go, another that released everyone from the lunch room, and then a final chime five minutes later that said you should be in class.
How time flies when you’re having fun telling fun old stories from the drama club. We’d been doing this every day for a couple of weeks since Chloe worked up the nerve to join us.
That was one of the great things about drama. There were all sorts of stories like that. Legends, really. Stories that had been passed down by word of mouth over the years.
There were stories that went back to the ‘70s and ‘80s when the school had just been built and my parents graced these hallowed halls. Sure some of the details might have changed in those years through a game of telephone, but the core truth remained the same.
It was one of the things that bonded us together. And it was also pretty cool to know I’d been a big part of one of those stories that would probably become another drama club legend.
The Legend of Brandy and the Full Moon. I snorted thinking about it.
Everyone started gathering up their stuff. Most everyone else had also long since dispensed with their trays and now they were just waiting for the chance to get out into the halls.
I wasn’t as lucky. I’d been so busy holding court and telling old drama stories, mostly in a bid to impress Chloe, so I had to quickly wolf down the rest of my fries and a mystery meat burger that I was barely able to choke down.
That didn’t taste like any burger I’d ever had before. That was for sure.
The second chime sounded releasing everyone from the lunch room as I finished inhaling my food and started choking. I looked around and for a moment I thought this might actually be the way I went. Everyone was leaving and no one seemed to notice I was sitting at our table choking on a half masticated piece of something that may or may not have been a cow at some point in the distant past.
Someone tapped me on the back and I coughed out some of the stuff. That was good.
I looked up and saw who was staring down at me. Chloe. That… was not so good. I would’ve rather been saved by anyone else so I could’ve been saved some embarrassment on top of everything else.
“Thanks,” I said between breaths.
Hey, I might be embarrassed to the point that I wanted to melt into my seat and never be seen again, but I wasn’t going to be rude or anything.
“No problem,” she replied. “You looked like you could use a little help.”
“You can say that again.”
I gathered my books and stood, but Chloe had an odd look on her face. Something about that look stopped me.
For some reason something about that look had me wondering if there was something wrong. It would be just my luck that something was wrong. Everything had been going so well that of course something was wrong.
There were times when I hated that my mind immediately went to a worst case scenario at times like this.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Who says something has to be up?” she replied.
“You have a look like there’s something going on here, so out with it,” I said.
The cafeteria was mostly empty at this point. There was one lunch lady going up and down the length of the place with one of those massive wide broom things that caught almost anything it came in contact with, but otherwise it was empty except for the sounds drifting in from the hall outside.
It wouldn’t stay like that for long though. The school staggered lunches so the cafeteria didn’t get too overcrowded. We were the middle lunch which meant there was one more group of students scheduled to come in.
It was a happy chance of fate that Chloe and I even had the same lunch period, and there was no guarantee that would continue to be the case next semester.
“You’re looking at me like you have something to say Chloe,” I said.
I reached out and risked grabbing her hand. Just for a moment. I knew she was still having issues with the whole public display of affection thing so I tried not to push my luck too much.
Still, she gave my hand a squeeze. That was progress. There was a time when she would’ve shoved my hand away and acted like I’d just done something terrible. There was a time when she would’ve had one of those freak outs like on the day when Mr. Thompson announced he was making us the leads in the play.
“Well I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’ve been having a lot of fun hanging out with you and everyone in the drama club, and I want to introduce you to some of my friends.”
She was looking down and to the side. She was also doing that thing where she blushed because something was going on to embarrass her.
I didn’t know what she could be talking about though. The only friend I’d ever seen her hanging out with had bee
n that bubbly cheerleader type at the beginning of the year, and it had become pretty obvious that high school social life had ripped them apart.
Which was fine by me.
The only other friends I could think of were…
Oh. Oh shit. She couldn’t be…
“Are you talking about going to your church or something?” I asked.
“Well yeah,” she said, her blush turning to a deep crimson. “I mean I guess I understand if it’s not something you want to do, but I’ve been hanging out with all these drama people lately and I figured maybe you could…”
I held a hand up. “Gonna stop you right there. There’s not a chance I’m going to some youth group thing.”
I had to take a breath just to calm myself down. That was getting into a trip down memory lane I’d rather not take.
“But why not?” she asked. “They’re good people. I mean most of them are. I know if Pastor Dave met you he’d think you were a good person too.”
And here we were taking that unwelcome trip down memory lane even though I really didn’t want to. How to explain to her that I’d had my time as a good church girl and decided it wasn’t for me?
“I’m sorry Chloe,” I said. “But the fact that you’re telling me your youth pastor might think I was okay if he had a chance to meet me should tell you everything you need to know about why I don’t want to meet him.”
“But I thought…”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t think. What do you think is going to happen if you waltz into your youth group with a girl like me? You’re the one who’s been terrified of people finding out and you’re going to do the next best thing to putting on a big neon sign saying you like girls?”
Okay, so maybe I was laying it on a little thick now. Maybe I was even getting close to being downright mean about this. I could see moisture gathering at the edge of Chloe’s eyes and I knew I had to be hurting her.
But the hurt in me ran deep too. It was a hurt she couldn’t possibly begin to understand. It was the hurt of being abandoned by a group of people who said they’d love you no matter what.