"This is all your fault, director's pet. This is a play. I'm not falling in love with you, and I would never ever go out with you, Jack Garrison."
Jack and Shayna can't get through a rehearsal without fighting.
Cheerleader Shayna loathes perfect Ja...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The wind raced past the upper-floor corner classroom like the ghosts in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. The haunting sound made the classroom undesirable for anyone to use for lunch other than the almost nonexistent Crestview Drama Society.
Carson always joked the room was like a cheering audience, but I felt the grating sound was too eerie and melancholy to be construed as excited fans.
The joke that room 322 was haunted was probably exactly what drew Jules to the Drama Society. They liked dark and macabre things and always brought some thick gothic novels to read while munching on veggie straws.
Hugh, the unelected president of the Drama Society, was the first to note that Tasha was late as he was hooking up his headphones to listen to his daily podcast.
Novah had taken up residence in the back of the room, looking bored. Her girlfriend had a different lunch period, so she sat silently sketching in the back of the room.
We couldn't ever get the whole cast together at lunch. There were too many of us, and some of our friends in Anton's after-school theater class didn't eat lunch with us. Jack ate with the football team since he was the quarterback. Juan and Shayna had lunch with Shayna's cheerleading friends. Kai sometimes came by if he got bored playing saxophone in the band hall, and Carson ate lunch whenever he pleased, depending on his mood.
"She's not texting me back," Hugh set his phone on the lab table hard.
"Stop worrying about Tash," Carson removed his headphones. "She's probably just sick."
Hugh pushed up his round glasses nervously. "Tasha has had perfect attendance the last three years."
I picked at my lunch halfheartedly. There were a lot of lines I needed to run, and Tasha always gave the best critiques. Hugh always said he didn't feel comfortable critiquing me because he thought I was always good.
My father was a professor, and his work brought him to new universities regularly. One of his new colleagues Dr. Roberson, suggested her daughter Novah show me around the first day. Novah introduced me to her friends, and that's how I found myself in room 322 for lunch every day.
Tasha was the first person to welcome me to the drama society on my first day at Crestview High School. Transferring to a new school in the middle of high school wasn't easy, but Tasha was a friendly face in a sea of uncertainty.
The door flew open, and Samantha, the stagehand, skipped in like she owned the place. She had dyed her hair pink this week, and today, it was braided across her head like Princess Leia in Star Wars. She wore a bright red leather jacket and knee-high platform boots under her black miniskirt.
Carson glanced up at her. "And you escaped dress code, how?"
Samantha spun. "You like it?"
Hugh took off his spectacles and polished them. I just nodded. Samantha was always drastically changing her appearance and clothes. I was pretty sure she had a wig collection since there was no way she dyed her hair a new color every two days. Everyone was pretty used to it.
