cue: confusion [IT FANFICTION]

how to disappear completely (no glue no borox)

I didn't have the energy—no, let's be honest—the motivation (or whatever the fuck) to journal anything for an entire week. So here's a half-hearted attempt at catching up:

1. Richie being bitchy.

2. Everybody being bitchy (other than me, of course).

3. Endless rehearsals exposing nobody's so-called "hidden talents."

(Except maybe mine: the talent to shut the hell up when Stanley Uris is within a 10-foot radius. Though, to be fair, that's less talent and more a finely-tuned survival instinct.)

Said survival instinct has been tested daily because Stanley has a hidden talent of his own: materializing behind me like a vengeful ghost whenever I'm not pulling my weight in rehearsals. It's like he has some kind of sixth sense for my bullshit.

Take today, for example. I was in the middle of an epic (internal) monologue, fully prepared to clap back at Richie for calling me a "drama queen" when suddenly—BAM—Stan was just there. Like he'd spawned out of thin air. And instead of joining in the chaos like a normal human being, he decided to lecture me about "being responsible for all stage business when he's not around."

To which I, naturally, asked if he seriously trusted me to channel my inner Stanley Uris and be perpetually pissed off.

He responded with The Look™.

So yeah, I shut up. That's apparently my thing now. Silence. Restraint. Self-control. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast has been balancing out my newfound maturity by being as obnoxious as humanly possible.

Case in point: Richie Tozier, local chaos enthusiast.

During Greta's heartfelt monologue about being burdened by all the attention she supposedly gets (spoiler: nobody cares), Richie decided this was the perfect time to start a silent "improv game" with the other bored cast members. The game eventually evolved into this: whoever could imitate Greta's dramatic mannerisms the best got to draw something in Eddie's script using permanent marker.

Eddie, predictably, did not consent to this.

"Why the fuck is there a vagina in my script?"

Needless to say, this didn't go over well. Greta flipped out, Eddie yelled, and Richie looked far too proud of himself for a guy who was about to get strangled. I tried to play peacemaker (keyword: tried) while Stanley stood off to the side, shaking his head like a disappointed dad.

Maybe years of pretentious stage-managing taught him not to interfere. Or maybe he's just tired of my shit. Either way, he left me to deal with the fallout.

And yeah, okay, I'm still petty about that. I've been petty about a lot of things lately, but this past week, I've settled into a more refined form of aggression: passive-aggressiveness.

Stan and I didn't talk about... you know. Of course we didn't. What was there to say, anyway? "It won't happen again"? "What do you mean it happened in the first place"? It's so much easier to just shove the awkwardness under the rug and use thinly-veiled hostility as a coping mechanism.

(Georgie, if you're reading this, ignore my advice until you're at least a teenager. Trust me on this one.)

Despite all the misery that is theater rehearsal, I have to admit... there had been a tiny, almost insignificant spark of enjoyment. Like, a weird kind of satisfaction seeing my friends actually pull off a scene without burning the whole place down.

I'm not saying I was sold on theater yet—I was still loyal to film, especially since no one had bothered to show me a single horror play—but I got it. The appeal.