GLASS_ A Standalone Novel - Arianne Richmonde Page 0,1

unnoticed.

I pretend I don’t hear, and shuffle quietly into a seat at the back. All heads turn, though. All eyes are on me. I lay my satchel gently on the floor.

“I said you’re late, Janie,” he shouts, his voice booming across the room.

“I’m sorry, I got—”

“Please leave.” His voice is still now, cold and deathly, but without anger.

I titter awkwardly.

“Out! I mean it. Out. If you have more urgent things to attend to than rehearsal, I think you’d better attend to them, don’t you?”

“I just—”

“I mean it, Janie.”

I pick up my satchel and slither out of the room, feeling like a scolded puppy. Daniel hates lateness. He also hates noises that interrupt his train of thought. Or interruption itself. He can’t abide that, people chit-chatting in whispers when he’s talking. Even if they are discussing what he has just said. No, Daniel wants everyone’s undivided attention. Nobody dares avert their eyes. There are certain things he cannot tolerate. However, if you do play by all his rules he is charming. Sweet, even. But if you break a rule . . .

Well, this is the first time it has happened. I’m the first person in the cast to have tested him.

I linger patiently outside. I am the child in the corner. I can hear him talking to the others as I listen to my measured breathing. They are discussing scene two. He wants the character of Jack to wait two more beats before he says his line. Two more beats? Nobody is as precise as Daniel. Would the audience even notice two more beats? Now they’re discussing how long a beat actually is. Three seconds? Five? Daniel is telling Jim (who’s playing Jack) that he’ll feel it instinctively. But I wonder.

Jim, like me, wants to please his director. Even through the thickness of the walls, through the door, I can feel the urgency in Jim’s body. He told me the other day that he has never respected a director so much in his life as Daniel, yet he has never worked with a director as young as Daniel, either. Daniel is only thirty. A rising star—the one with the Midas touch. All his productions, so far, have gone to Broadway and toured the major cities of the world. His actors win Tony awards. The pressure is on. We all want to be perfect.

And I was late.

They all begin to file out. Notes are over. Everybody will now spend tonight tossing and turning, questioning Daniel’s notes over in their minds.

“Later, Janie,” Suzy says, skipping past me.

“Later, Suze.”

“Hey Janie, don’t take it personally,” Frank whispers, as he sidles around me with a grin on his face. Daniel praised him. Told him his kiss with Angela in scene one “spoke volumes”. Frank is beaming like the Cheshire Cat.

“See you tomorrow, sweetheart,” Angela says, and she strokes me on the cheek. And then she adds in a soft voice, “Don’t worry, he’ll forgive you.”

“See you,” I reply dejectedly.

Daniel is still inside the theater. I can hear him shuffling papers. No iPad or tablet, he hates gadgets and only uses his cell in emergencies.

He calls out to me. “Janie? Are you still there?”

I slip through the door quietly.

He isn’t looking at me but says, “Stop twiddling your hair, it shows how nervous you are.”

How does he know I was twiddling my hair? I was, but how did he know? “I’m so sorry I was late.”

“You need to get those habits under control,” he murmurs, “not good for you, as an actor, to have little traits like that, which can manifest themselves when you’re working, when you’re supposed to be in character. As an actor, you need to be aware of all your body movements, even the ones you think nobody notices.”

He is still looking down at his notes. But then his gaze turns to me, and I feel my insides churn and fold; my heart misses a beat—I sense my shortness of breath. I steady myself against the still half-open door. I feel faint. His eyes are searing into me. Blue. What sort of blue? Prussian blue? They are intense, piercing, rimmed with dark lashes that make perfect sense with his almost black, ruffled hair. But his eyes tell a tale of infinitesimal sadness that gives him a trace of vulnerability. A lie, I think. Daniel is not vulnerable. He’s a pillar of strength. My heart is now pounding through my thin pink dress.

“Come here, Janie, I want to talk to you.” He motions for me