My Little Bird

Part Three

Sulkily dragging my feet through the theatre, I was thinking too hard about what a bad person I am to notice Lanky strutting up to me with arrogance rolling off her in waves.

She snatched the folder from me. “I specifically gave you a map so that you wouldn’t get lost,” she spat, and I scowled, wondering how Miss Clayton could see any good in this person.

“What’s the point having a folder all the way in the music department anyway, when you have one right there?” I asked, half irritated and half confused as I gestured to the plastic folder lying on the stage that Lanky had been holding when I first saw her.

Her lips formed a smirk, one so truly evil that it was so hard not to punch her right there. “Oh, I could have used this one. I just didn’t like the look of you, so I sent you away for a bit while we got started.”

I glared at her in disbelief and overwhelming rage. This girl was unbearable. “Why don’t you grab that folder and shove it up your ugly little–”

“Girls,” the short, podgy boy broke in, looking hugely exasperated. He shot Lanky a pointed glare as she opened her mouth, no doubt to snap something at my face. “Stop it. I’m not doing this to sit around and watch you bicker like little kids. We’ve got a job to do.”

He shot me an apologetic glance and I smiled gratefully at him. I decided that his nickname was Kind.

The Other Guy, who hadn’t uttered a single word since we’d met, was lingering in the background and avoiding everyone’s eyes as he navigated in and out of the front and back of the stage. I decided to pay no attention to him, worrying that I would be slapped in the face with his weirdness if I did.

Kind was going through the folder that I’d gone through hell to get to. “We do have some basic outlines in here. Shannon was just trying to get on your nerves,” he explained to me. Oh, so Shannon is her name. No, Lanky definitely suits her better. I’ll stick with that. “You can have a look through these if you want, to get more of an idea of what we’re going to be doing for the next few months.”

I dreaded having to meet up with these people on a regular basis, but swallowed my pride when I realized I owed it to Miss Clayton after being a bitch to her blind son. Not that she knew that, or ever needed to know that – but I probably deserved a few months of suffering these three people to make up for it and make myself feel better, at least.

Flicking through the folder, I noticed that they hadn’t done much yet, which was a relief. There was a list of things that needed to be done, and I noticed with a sinking feeling that it filled up a page and a half of small writing. A lot of them were basic things but some were specific, like advertisements and invitations and schedules for performances.

“I don’t see why this needs so much preparation,” I muttered, coming across a page where someone had literally sketched a picture of the theatre packed with thousands of faces and a person with a guitar on stage, in a single spotlight.

Of course, it was Lanky that answered me, her voice brittle. “This is going to be the most important event that this university has ever hosted. Of course it’s going to need ‘so much preparation’, you brat.”

I felt my fingers tighten their grip on the folder but quickly calmed myself down, counting to five in my mind. If I blew up for a third time in one day, that would totally be the most humiliating record – and I hadn’t even had lunch yet. Maybe that was why I was so moody.

Kind took the folder from me when I was done, and flashed me a sincere smile. “You look like you want to sleep for five days,” he chuckled. “You can go, if you like. We weren’t planning on doing anything today, so I don’t know why Miss Clayton picked today to send you.”