Finding June (5 page)

“I think the groups are already assigned . .
. so we don’t know who will be in what group,” Joseph said stiffly
to Xani, making her pout.

“June and Joseph, of course,” Mr. Carroll
said absentmindedly as he shuffled through the pile of scripts in
his hands, not responding to what Joseph had said, but simply
thinking out loud as he often did.

I gave Joseph a thumbs up and a cheesy smile,
knowing Xani was about to try to pout her way into our group. I’d
let Joseph deal with that. Luckily for him, Xani was soon put into
her own group and couldn’t keep trying to bribe Mr. Carroll into
putting her in ours.

“All right, let’s do this,” Joseph said,
rubbing his hands together as I handed him his script. We made our
way into the green room behind the stage to rehearse, as per Mr.
Carroll’s instructions. We only had a few days to perfect our skit,
and if we wanted to win this self-proclaimed competition, we were
going to have to start practicing now. Joseph kept subtly dropping
hints about how I’d better not let my newfound stardom affect my
commitment to winning our class competition, and I kept playfully
deflecting his accusations with a coy smile and a few well-placed
winks.

“All I’m saying,” Joseph began, as we settled
into the green room to practice before the bell rang for our next
class, “is that I’d better not see an amazing performance on
Forensic Faculty
and then a crap one in class the next
day.”

I could tell he was joking, so I tried my
best to annoy him. “But what I was thinking is that we could try a
different approach from everyone else in the class. You know
everyone is going to try to do well, right? So let’s just be awful!
Then we’ll really stand out,” I said, as if he should have thought
of this ages ago.

“Very funny, June,” Joseph replied, shaking
his head at my suggestion and quickly reading over the script we
had been given. “Hey, I get to be funny,” he said, suddenly
excited. “Well . . . for about two seconds.”

Joseph
loved
funny parts. I figured it
was because he’d always loved Harold Lloyd. He repeatedly insisted
that Harold was one of the few people who truly sacrificed for his
art (which wasn’t true at all). Of course, he didn’t sacrifice in
the typical sense of the word. He was a silent film star who had a
few fingers blown off during a photo shoot when the prop bomb he
was holding exploded unexpectedly. Macabre story? Yes. But for some
reason Joseph loved it.

“Oh . . . ” he said out of nowhere.
“Awkward.”

“What?” I asked, skimming the script quickly
to find what could possibly be labeled as "awkward." It wasn’t too
hard to locate.

“Huh,” was all I could say, once I saw the
four-letter word printed on the page I held. “Kiss?” I read the
word in puzzlement, as if it were foreign to me, (although the word
definitely was well known, since it was the only word I’d been
thinking of since I found out I’d be kissing Lukas Leighton on the
show). Instead of saying, "Let’s see if Mr. Carroll will give us a
different script, because this is way too weird," I simply shrugged
my shoulders at Joseph, pretending it was no big deal. He seemed to
take his cue from me and nodded in agreement, though his face
looked like he had just been called to serve a mission in the
Bermuda Triangle.

“No big deal,” he said slowly under his
breath, almost as if he were giving himself a pep talk.

“Maybe for today we’ll just rehearse the rest
of the skit. No need to practice that . . . other part . . . for a
while,” I said with a sense of authority, as if I knew what I was
talking about.

“Good point,” he agreed a bit too
quickly.

The instant we began rehearsing the
non-kissing part of the script, I could see why Mr. Carroll had
given it to us. The scene was supposed to be acted out as a
black-and-white movie. The couple, played by Joseph and me, were
unorthodox bank robbers who’d narrowly escaped being caught by the
police. We were supposed to be hiding out in an abandon store near
the bank while the search for us continued, and while inside, we
would get into an argument. Mr. Carroll’s only direction was that
he wanted it to be big and a little overacted, which suited us just
fine. It was always nice to be able to do something different.

Joseph started our scene off by pacing back
and forth in the green room, tripping over his shoes on one jaunt
across the room and stumbling to regain his balance. I sat in a
chair, my head following his movements. As he regained his balance,
he rounded on me, waving his imaginary gun in my direction.

“What could you possibly be thinking?” he
spat, his hand gestures very big and dramatic. “Robbery is an
art
, not an excuse to throw a brick through a window!”

I stood up indignantly, pulling my own
imaginary gun out of my imaginary pocket and stepping close enough
to him that my pointer finger gun barrel stuck into his chest.

“What’s more artful than smashing a window,
taking the cash, and still not getting caught?” I inquired, my eyes
narrowing at him dangerously. He waited a beat before answering,
letting the intensity hang in the air like a thick fog.

“If you don’t point that thing somewhere
else, I’ll have to reconsider my idea of working as a team,” he
whispered darkly, his face forming an expression I’d never seen my
sweet Joseph wear. It was actually a bit terrifying and it caught
me off guard for a moment. I had to collect myself before going
on.

I dropped my hand from his chest and turned
as if I were about to walk away from him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he
asked.

“To find a new partner,” I shot back at him,
putting as much ice into my voice as I could.

“Perfect. How about while you do that, I’ll
stay here and count all that money you just made me,” he said
condescendingly, causing me to stop in my tracks and turn slowly
toward him again. He kicked his backpack on the ground, indicating
that it would act as our bag of money for this rehearsal. I tried
to make it look as if I were thinking hard about a way to turn this
situation in my favor and had suddenly discovered the perfect ploy.
I walked over to him slowly, looking up at him from under my
eyelashes, my lips turned up into a half smile.

“I see your point,” I said finally, sounding
as if I had just realized how foolish I was being. I injected as
much sweetness into my tone as I could muster while trying to look
seductive. “Really there’s no reason to fight, right?” I asked as I
finally closed the distance between us. I rested my arm on his
shoulder and let my fingers play with the back of his hair. “We’re
on the same team aren’t we?” I said sweetly, moving my face close
enough to him that I could feel his shallow breathing on my cheek.
While doing this, I moved the "bag of money" behind me with my
foot, trying to be graceful as I did so—which proved to be
difficult, since he had so many books in his backpack.

Joseph’s face was bright red and he looked a
bit like a deer in the headlights, but he still managed to say his
line, however broken it sounded. “Um . . . yes . . . Yes, we are on
the same team,” he said shakily, sliding his hand around to the
small of my back while using
his
foot to slide the "bag of
money" back behind him again. I could feel his hand shaking on my
back, but I tried to ignore it. I assumed he was probably just
nervous about performing this very intimate scene in front of our
class. No one in the class ever let you live down a kissing
scene.

He was looking at me intently now, his brow
furrowed slightly and a look in his eye that I couldn’t quite put
my finger on. He pulled me closer to him, causing my heart to race
for some reason and making the blood rush up to my cheeks. I
swallowed loudly, almost comically, as I tried to keep my focus on
the scene. Joseph and I had been in dozens of plays together, but
we’d never had a scene like this. I had always wondered what it
would be like to have to act something like this out, but now that
it was here, I was actually in a state of mild panic.

By this point, Joseph's eyes were closed and
his hand had tightened its grip on my back. As his lips were only
inches from mine, our noses touching lightly, I pulled back
abruptly, startling him. Apparently he had gotten a bit lost in the
scene as well. I cleared my throat in an attempt to gain my
composure and get my cheeks to stop flushing.

“All right, and so this is where we would
kiss and both reach for the bag at the same time, catching each
other in the act, right?” I asked, looking down at the floor rather
than at Joseph. I wasn’t sure why I wouldn’t look at him. Maybe I
was worried about what I might see in his face, or maybe I was a
little worried about what I might feel if I looked at him. Joseph
and I did not see each other in a romantic way—at all. It was
probably just my constant fantasizing over Lukas that had gotten me
so off balance. I was confusing my feelings; confusing
who
I
was having the feelings about.

Joseph cleared his throat as well, apparently
trying to pull himself back to reality. His cheeks were still red
and he was still breathing hard, though I pretended not to notice.
“Yeah,” he said finally, sounding distant. “Yeah, we’ll need to
make sure when we both reach for the bag we . . . um . . . we
really play up the look we give each other in the end… that’s where
the comedy will be, if we can do it right."

“Perfect,” I said, trying to sound bright and
cheerful, though my words just sounded odd, like yelling in an
insulated room with no echo. Finally, I looked up at Joseph and was
startled to see him staring at me intently with a confused look in
his eyes. We didn’t say anything for a moment, and the silence in
the room was deafening. Joseph eventually opened his mouth to say
something, but was cut off by Xani bursting into the room. Her
unexpected entrance caused us both to jump in alarm, as if we’d
been caught doing something wrong.

“I’ve been looking
everywhere
for you
guys!” she exclaimed in her southern accent. “The bell’s just about
to ring and—,” she let her words trail off, looking from me, to
Joseph, and back again. “You guys just have a séance or something?”
she asked with a small laugh. “Looks like ya’ll have seen a
ghost.”

I was the first one to stop acting like a
complete idiot. “The auditorium
is
supposed to be haunted,”
I said cheerfully, figuring I should do some actual acting
today.

“Wait, you didn’t really, did you?” she
asked, a little slow about catching on to my joke. “Never mind. Not
important. What
is
important is that you tell me absolutely
everything about Lukas Leighton right now!”

Xani pulled me violently by the arm, barely
giving me the chance to grab my backpack off the floor before she’d
forcibly led me out of the green room. Joseph seemed to finally
regain his composure and hurriedly picked up his backpack to run
after us.

“So, what did he smell like?” Xani asked
seriously.

“Heaven,” I replied, finding that this
conversation was clearing my mind of its recently confused
contents. “I don’t even really know how to describe it.” Xani just
beamed at me as if this were the best news she’d ever heard.

“Was he nice? I’d hate to think he was one of
those celebrities who’re big jerks to everyone who isn’t famous,”
she said with a shake of her head.

“He was so nice! Well . . . I mean, I didn’t
get to talk to him much out of character,” I admitted. “We only
said a few words to each other before rehearsing the scene . . .
but he seemed really nice for those few sentences,” I said, trying
to sound as reassuring as I could. Joseph was walking a few steps
behind us, muttering something under his breath. I ignored him.

“But didn’t y’all have a chance to talk after
the audition?” Xani asked, sounding a bit disappointed that I
didn’t have more to tell her.

“Well, he had to leave right after we
finished our scene. I’m sure he’s really busy.”

Xani nodded slowly at this revelation. “Makes
sense,” she agreed as the bell rang.

After Xani left us, I turned to Joseph,
determined not to let things be weird at all. “Well, I’m off to
learn about all sorts of interesting, non-math related subjects,” I
teased.

He just rolled his eyes and adjusted the way
his backpack sat on his shoulders. “Yeah, thanks June,” he
deadpanned, before winking at me and making his way to his next
class.

Maybe things wouldn’t get weird after
all.

CHAPTER 6

The rest of the school day was uneventful.
Joseph and I went to Spanish and Art History together, and then
said our goodbyes after he dropped me off at home, never once
mentioning the weirdness of that morning. Gran was already waiting
for me in the kitchen with some new, bizarre concoction that would
make me a better actress somehow. She wore a deep emerald tracksuit
that made her flaming red hair stand out from miles away. I took
this apparel to indicate that today was going to be a workday. I
sighed deeply, but wasn’t let off the hook. Surrendering, I changed
into my black yoga pants and oversized purple v-neck T-shirt to
prepare for what would undoubtedly be a grueling workout. I pulled
my curly hair back into a high bun and secured an elastic headband
in place to hold any stray hairs back.

“What have you got for me this time?” I asked
Gran when I returned to the kitchen. I rubbed my hands together,
ready to take on any weird tasks she would throw at me. After all,
I was now on a hit TV show. I could handle anything, right? Gran
didn’t say a word, but pushed over a glass of blue-ish, purple-ish
sludge. At least this time it wasn’t green.

“Drink,” she said with a knowledgeable smile,
as she always did when making me try some strange new concoction. I
raised an eyebrow at her skeptically. “Oh relax, Bliss, it’s just a
berry smoothie.” That put me at ease exponentially and I happily
accepted the drink.