Steering the Stars (6 page)

       “Okay, fine. Whatever,” I conceded. Now that I knew I was getting nowhere fast, I wanted to get out of this office as soon as possible. Hopefully before I burst into tears in front of all the other students who were waiting to speak to the school counselor.

       He considered whatever was on his computer screen and said, “Your choices for first period electives are Intro to Theater or Marine Biology.”

       I choked on a laugh. “You're joking.”

       “Afraid not, Miss McKain.” A note of real annoyance crossed his voice, as though I was purposely being difficult. So what if the line of students outside of his office was growing restless? I wasn’t the one who screwed up my schedule. This wasn’t my fault. “Now, are you going to pick a class or will I have the honor?”

       Theater or Marine Biology? These were not good options in that they both sucked.

       I couldn’t help but feel like if Hannah were here, none of this would be happening. She'd have somehow convinced Mr. Kant to give me the class because she had that kind of power over people. I called it the Hannah Effect. And, if all else failed and she couldn’t get Mr. Kant to relent, she’d probably have dropped another class herself so that we could suffer through
Romeo and Juliet
or learn about the mating habits of squid together.

       “I’m waiting,” he said impatiently, giving me a pointed look.

       I found myself wondering,
what would Hannah do?
Costumes and bright lights or salty water samples and dead crab carcasses to examine?

       “Theater,” I said quickly. I just might have to get a bracelet custom embroidered with
WWHD?
to get me through this year.

       “Excellent.” Mr. Kant nodded and typed the change into his computer. He printed out the new schedule and handed it to me. “You're all set.”

        “Fine,” I told him ungratefully as I stared down at the slip of white paper. It looked innocuous enough, but it was solid proof that major suckage was ahead.

       “Intro to Theater,” I read quietly, my insides going icy cold. Theater
. Theater.
That meant acting. Being on a stage. In front of other people.

       Was I crazy? For all of my life, I’d made a point of staying off the radar. I didn’t go to school dances. I didn’t date. I didn’t make a spectacle of myself. If you searched “wallflower” in the dictionary, I was confident that my name would be listed under the derivations.

       Fingering the paper schedule, I realized that my sudden burst of Hannah-infused gusto had been a huge blunder. I swallowed and lifted my chin, but before I could tell Mr. Kant that I’d been joking and really wanted to spend first period learning about red algae and sea turtles, he looked past me to the line of students waiting outside his office, waved his hand and shouted, “Next!”

****

The walk down C hall—a hall I had never once been down—seemed painfully long. My stomach was in knots and my head was killing me. I located the classroom by the number plaque nailed over the door. I had every intention of sliding into a desk in the back row. Preferably in a dark, dank corner where I could blend into the shadows and no one would notice my presence.

       Except there were no desks.

       None.

       There were just two rectangular tables surrounded by a few mismatched metal chairs. There weren’t nearly enough seats for the number of students already gathered in the classroom, but nobody seemed to mind. They were sitting on the floor and the windowsills and on a handful of bean bag chairs that were scattered throughout the room.

       There was so much chaos everywhere I looked that my stomach started to feel swishy.

       Bright, sparkly costumes were draped over hangers and haphazardly thrown onto rolling racks. Posters of Broadway shows were pinned cockeyed to the walls with bright red and blue thumbtacks. On a low circular table near the back window there was a box full of random props. I spied a pair of purple goggles, a plastic microphone bedazzled with rhinestones, and a green wig that looked like it belonged in a Dr. Seuss book.

       The whole scene made me want to turn and run, but before I could backtrack, a tall, willowy woman glided through the door, effectively trapping me inside.

       “Hello, actors and welcome to Intro to Theater!” she greeted us enthusiastically. “My name is Nina but—” she bowed her head and sighed, “—alas, the administration insists you all call me Mrs. Cobb.”

     
 
A few people laughed. I nervously backed myself up safely against the nearest wall and tried my best to be invisible.

       Nina, or
Mrs. Cobb
, could have been twenty or fifty for all I could tell. She was wearing all black—loose gaucho pants, a flowy blouse, and pointy-toed shoes. The only splash of color was a bright orange and pink skinny scarf that actually looked more like a knitted necktie than anything else. Her hair was long and dark brown with heavy bangs that fell in a blunt line straight across her forehead.

       “Let’s circle up!” she called out, pushing at the thick frames of her glasses. “We’re going to play a couple of getting-to-know-you games. Maybe even try a little improv on the first day.”

       Circle up?
Was she serious?

       The rest of the class got busy pushing aside the tables to make a wide enough space in the middle of the room to accommodate everyone.  

       “Is she going to make us all join hands?” I asked the air.

       “She probably will,” said a cute boy I semi-recognized. “Before the bell rings, we’ll all be singing ‘Kumbaya’ and telling each other our deepest fears.”

       “No… not really?”

       He laughed at my expression. “No, you’re safe. She’s just going to go over the basics today. If she actually calls anyone up for improv, it will be with volunteers.”

       “Thank God. I’m not nearly caffeinated enough.” I took a breath. “Um, by the way… How do you know all this?”

       “I’m actually assisting for the class,” he told me.

       “Oh.” Well, that explained it. I looked him over again, taking in his sculpted hair and dark brown eyes. He was looking more and more familiar to me. “Are you…?”

       “Miles Sloan,” he offered.

        That’s right. Northside was a huge school, servicing Libby Park and two other nearby towns, but after a while you started to notice the same people and put them into categories. Miles was one of the drama kids and I was pretty sure he’d played Captain Hook in last spring’s
Peter Pan
show. I hadn’t seen the play—just the posters—but I remembered Hannah talking about it. “I think you were lab partners with my best friend last year.”

        His eyebrows moved. “In chemistry?”

     
 
“Yeah.”

       “Hannah Vaughn?”

     
 
I nodded. “Yep.”

       “Ah…” Something sparked for him. I saw it move across his face. “I remember... You used to wait for her after class. You’re the friend.”

        The friend.
That’s how I was known.

       “Hannah’s an angel,” he continued. “She saved my ass in that class.”

       She had mentioned something about covering all the lab assignments because Miles was cute but far from the brightest bulb in the chandelier. “She’s good at that.”

       The tables were still being moved around. Someone had knocked over one of the garment racks and another girl caught her sweater on a fake sword so now a huge cleanup effort was being coordinated. I was fine hanging back like this with Miles.

       “So, how is Hannah doing?” he asked.

       “Oh, she’s good. She’s in London this year.”

       “For the whole year?”

       I wanted to say,
Yes, and thank you for the reminder.
Instead, I mumbled, “Uh, yeah.”

        “That’s awesome. I bet she’s having a blast,” he said, smacking his lips. “She does the writing thing, doesn’t she?”

      “She does. She’s actually in a great writing program there. It’s like…” I searched for something more to say. “It’s a really big deal.”

       “Very cool.”

       And it was. It was the coolest. That was what I had to keep reminding myself.

       In the center of the classroom, Mrs. Cobb lifted her arms and swung them around her body. “We are ready!”

       We all sat down and she explained the rules of the getting-to-know-you game. We would go around the circle, each telling two truths and one lie. The people sitting on either side of us had to guess which of our statements were true and which one was false. Shockingly, I’d actually played this at a sleepover in the fourth grade. I remembered it being like a very tame version of Truth or Dare.

       “Should you really be playing this game?” I whispered to Miles. “Since you’re the teacher’s assistant, it seems kind of unfair. Shouldn’t you be… I don’t know... assisting?”

       He smiled at me. “The teaching assistant title is a loose one. Mainly this is just Mrs. Cobb helping me fill in one of my elective spots,” he confided. “I’m already in her advanced class this afternoon and I’m also a member of the drama club. For this class, I’ll have to help with grading and do some busy work, but I’m hoping once we get into the play, I can use the time to practice lines and run through my scenes.”

       “The play?”

       Miles didn’t get a chance to answer. The game had moved fast around the circle and we were up.

       The “facts” I told about myself were lacking in drama and beyond lame. The first truth I shared was that I had never left the state of Oklahoma. The second was that I had an unhealthy addiction to coffee and pretzel M&Ms. The lie I told was that I was allergic to nectarines.

       Miles picked out the lie right away, but since he was the first student to talk to me aside from Henry, I decided not to hold it against him.

       “How did you do that?” I asked him when the game and the rest of “circle time” was over and we were retrieving our bags from where we’d all dumped them by the windows.

       “How did I do what?”

       “Figure out my lie so easily.”

       “The key to lying is to not hesitate. Works every time.”

       “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, smiling at him.

       He grinned back.

       Talking to Miles wasn’t the same as having Hannah here—not even close—but it was pleasant. His jeans were way too tight and he had on copious amounts of cologne, but he seemed nice enough. Maybe we would become friends. And, maybe this class wouldn’t be so bad after all.

       “Thank you all for joining in today,” Mrs. Cobb said over the scrape of tables and chairs being moved back into position. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk about elements of acting and the fall production. As you all know from the form you were given when you signed up for the class, participation in our show is mandatory. This means your afternoons from mid-September until December will be occupied!”

       “Did she really just say that?” I asked Miles.

       He just laughed. That wasn’t the response I was hoping for.

       “I mean it,” I pushed. “I signed up late so I didn’t see anything about a play…”

       “You’ll be fine.”

       “But I won’t be,” I said firmly. “I don’t do stuff like school plays. I can’t even give speeches in class.”

       “It’s okay,” he said in a reassuring tone. “Participation is required, but there’s no way everyone is going to get a part. Especially not in this class.”

       “Are you sure?”

       The dismissal bell rang out shrilly and students started to push past us.

       “I’m sure,” he told me. “You have to go through the audition just so you understand the process and get the experience, but that’s all. The people who don’t get speaking parts will be put in the chorus or given a job backstage. There’s plenty to do.” He lifted his hand and started to list the tasks on his fingers. “Make up, costume stuff, design work, and there’s even going to be set building.”

       “You said…
the chorus
?”

       Miles moved his head. “It’s a musical. I don’t know which one yet, but, between us, I’m hoping she picks
West Side Story.
I’ve always wanted to play Tony.”

       “Ummm…”

       It was bad enough that I had to take a theater class but now I was going to be expected to audition for a musical?

       “Do you sing?”

       In the shower, but that was about it. “No…”

       “Play an instrument?”

       I thought of my mother’s piano, sitting at home gathering dust. “I used to play piano but—”

       “Well, there you go,” Miles said. “Caroline, I’ve got to get moving, but I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”

       “Sure,” I replied absently. My mind was already someplace else.