People Watching - EJ Caswell ¹

"Don't let it all go to waste."

Scarlett and Valentina met up at the front of the school, before striding through the hallways toward the auditorium and backstage rooms where they, along with the rest of the theatre group, had been asked to meet. The raven-haired girl looked her friend up and down, eyeing up the sweater she wore. "Is that EJ's?" She asked, noticing it from Thanksgiving, and Scarlett looked over at her friend before back down at the jumper.

"Maybe." She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke before the pair came to an abrupt halt as they took in the state of the room they just walked into. "Oh, my god." She muttered, stepping further into the room where the others where stood. Scarlett moved toward EJ, grabbing onto his wrist so he would look down toward her. "What happened?"

"It's okay. Nobody was hurt." Ms Jenn spoke out to everyone. "There was a small fire in the theatre over the holiday and the sprinklers did their job."

Valentina scoffed, looking around at all of the props that she had spent weeks working on. "Small?!" Scarlett wrapped her arms around her friend, knowing how much time she had dedicated to the production.

A firefighter then came over to them, placing a now burnt basketball into Ms Jenn's hands. "We're almost done in here, just have to finish up in the faculty room next. Some circuits blew in there over the break. Unfortunately, the show cannot go on."

"What?"

"Fire ripped through half your costumes and the sprinklers ruined a bunch of your sets. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to red tag the entire backstage area for a month at least."

Valentina leant into Scarlett's touch at the news of all her hard work being totally ruined. "I'm sorry." The brunette muttered as the raven-haired girl's arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her into the side-hug more.

"Okay, okay. Listen here." Ms Jenn said shakily, taking a breath. "Hug your neighbour, take a moment." Scarlett reached out to EJ, grabbing his hand in her own and squeezing it gently. "Let's all reconvene in the cafeteria after school to talk about our options. Nini and Ricky spread the word."

______

"Okay, guys!" Ms Jenn caught the theatre department's attention as they all chatted about what had just happened. "Wait, where's Gina?" She queried.

Ashlyn spoke up as she moved to sit on one of the tables. "I think she's going through a family thing right now." Everyone followed suit and found somewhere to sit.

"Okay, prayers to our Gina. I'm really not sure what to say." She took a deep breath and Valentina laid her head down on Scarlett's shoulder who wrapped an arm around her. "You've all worked so hard and I've seen all of you grow so much. But if we don't have a theatre, we don't have a show."

The room quickly fell into confused and upset murmurs, they all imagined that Ms Jenn would have found some quick, clever plan like she always did but she seemed to have come up dry. "Come on, Ms Jenn, we've gotta do something." Carlos encouraged, and everyone agreed, desperate to save the show.

"I think we..." She hesitated, unsure of what to say. "I don't know, I guess we could consider other venues." She suggested and everyone seemed to love the idea as they began to chatter excitedly.

"Oh, oh, what about the old Kingston downtown?" Scarlett offered.

Ms Jenn shook her head. "It's condemned."

"The lucky ducky puppet pavilion?" EJ presented.

"It's a massive Starbucks now."

Carlos looks around before deciding to shoot his shot. "What about the El Ray?" Everyone loved the idea, nodding enthusiastically in agreement but Ms Jenn didn't seem to enjoy the suggestion as she began to ask if anyone else had any ideas. "Ms Jenn, I feel like you had a really weird reaction to what I just said."