Rebel at Spruce High (Spruce Texas Romance #5) - Daryl Banner Page 0,63

chirpily and hands me a script. I drop my backpack at my feet, pull out a pencil, then start drawing on the copyright page of the script, waiting for something to begin. “Here’s a highlighter,” says another cast member whose name I think is Frankie, “if you need one for all your lines.” I give the highlighter one look, grunt, “No thanks,” then carry on with my drawing. I’m not bothered again.

Then the auditorium doors swing open, and in rushes Toby. He finds me at once, smiles, seems to think twice about smiling, then assumes a sort of stoic, all-business face as he ascends the steps of the stage and takes a seat next to me at the table. “Hey,” he greets me, then politely accepts a script from Tamika. “Thanks.”

“Hey,” I greet him back, smirking, then continue sketching.

A minute later, Toby’s friend Kelsey pops up and drops into the seat next to him. “You looked cozy today at lunch,” she murmurs teasingly to him, and I don’t think she meant for me to hear that, but her voice is gruff and carries. “Where were you during yearbook?” Toby asks back, red-faced. “Ms. Reyes sent me on an errand to take photos of band class. Don’t worry, Toby, I kept my distance during lunch. Me and the Theatre peeps totally weren’t talking about you and Domino the whole time.” That comment earns her a glare from Toby, and I’m left wondering what the hell “Domino” is.

When the director Ms. Joy arrives, we are immediately set to the task of reading the script out loud among the table. She insists we only pay attention to the story and not “sweat over acting it out or being too dramatic”, since we have well over six weeks of rehearsal to worry about that. The whole time we read the script, I keep sneaking glances at Toby, taking note of how freaked out he looks, his eyes full of fear throughout every scene we read. Tamika reads the stage directions, and when it comes time that our love-bird characters kiss in scene four—which Tamika reads in a dutiful and serious voice—the table is full of giggles, eyes looking up from the scripts to find me and Toby. All they get in return is my deadpan stare and Toby’s blushing cheeks.

After the table read, which ends an hour and forty minutes of unending tedium later, Ms. Joy dismisses us for a short break, after which we return for a round of character questions, discussions, and a few other things that have me bored out of my mind. This is such a crappy script, I keep telling myself, yet everyone at the table seems to revere it like it’s already won a Pulitzer.

“You’re keeping awfully quiet back there,” notes Ms. Joy from the other end of the long table, sucking on the end of her glasses, which she has pinched between her ring-decorated fingers. “You got something to say about Kingsley’s journey in the play?”

All the faces at the table turn to me, Toby’s included.

I shrug. “It sucks.”

Frankie stifles a laugh by slapping a hand on his mouth, his eyes wide. Kelsey sucks her lips in, shocked. Toby quite suddenly avoids eye contact with me, his face going red.

Ms. Joy, however, seems completely unfazed. “It sucks?” She gestures toward me with her glasses. “Why does it suck?”

“It just does.”

“Alright. ‘It just does.’ Hmm.” She shrugs, then goes back to sucking on the end of her glasses. “For the sake of encouraging a more intelligent discussion on the matter, indulge us. Tell me why you believe the script sucks, Mr. Kingsley. We’ve got all night.”

After a tense spell of silence passes, I realize she’s serious. The curious onlookers still lurking in random seats in the auditorium are even perking their ears, waiting. I give the script a swat of my hand. “Kingsley is an indecisive cock-tease who uses the word ‘fricking’ too much. Literally no one on Earth says ‘fricking’. Danny still sounds like a woman somehow—and one with the intelligence of a lemming, at that. Hell, even in the original script as a woman named Danielle, the character is so flat, uninspired, and predictable that it makes me not want to return after intermission, and I’m in the damned play. It’s like trying to breathe life into a blow-up doll. The women at this table should be offended Danielle ever existed.”

Silence rings out over the table, the auditorium, and maybe even the entire school for all