In The Wings

Act I Scene IV

Christine hummed to herself nervously. She had just gotten the role of Cinderella and although she had already known the script and the music, she felt less prepared than she would like to. Carly had gotten months of time to work on her part and her blocking. Christine had less than a month to put it all together. Sure enough, today was opening night for Garnier High's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. Christine was playing that lead role. That made her so nervous, she could hardly focus on anything.

Christine had already put on her makeup and costume, and she had been mic-ed already as well. In other words, she looked just about ready to go on stage and perform. But she didn't feel that way. She walked around a little bit, trying to find Meg in a sea of ballroom dancers. She finally found Meg leaning against the wall with her phone, looking bored.

"Meg, Meg!" Christine said, trying to get to her without pushing too many of the other dancers away. Meg looked up and smiled.

"You look like a princess!" Meg said. Then she stopped herself and thought about it. "No, never mind, you will look like a princess. Right now you're in the rags stage of rags to riches."

Her worlds made Christine smile, but her heart was still all jittery. It was bothering her. She didn't like it, not one bit. Maybe she shouldn't have taken the role.

"Meg, I don't know if I can do this. I don't feel ready," Christine said urgently.

Meg gave her a look, fully taking her focus away from her phone. "Well, look, Christy. If I didn't think you could pull this off, I would have never pushed you into the role. You got the role, and now you're here. Christy, you can do it. I believe in you. Mr. Montegomery and Mrs. Richard believe in you." She smiled widely at Christine. "Everyone here believes in you...except for you."

Christine looked down. Meg was right, of course. Meg always seemed to have a way to pull Christine out of any problem. If Christine was stuck in a fog, Meg would gladly be the lighthouse and help Christine find her way out of it. Christine always tried to do the same for Meg, but Meg tended to be so happy all of the time that it had never really had been necessary.

"Thank you, Meg," Christine said, going in for a hug. A few people around giggled just because of how much shorter Meg was than Christine. It was pretty funny to look at.

"No problem, Christy," Meg said right after they had broken away from one another. She brought her phone back up again. "Now," she said. "Showtime is in fifteen minutes."

Christine's eyes widened. "No. Really?"

"Yes, really."

Christine shook her head and plucked at her skirt, which was getting a bit of fake dirt on her hands. "Well, Meg, you've been a great help. I'm going to go and try to calm myself down...you know, by myself."

"Bye Christy!" Meg said.

"Bye!" Christine called back. She wrinkled her nose and tried to get the fake dirt off of her hands until she realized that as Cinderella it wouldn't be such a bad thing. She walked through the hordes of ballroom dancers, many of which smiled at her. These used to be the people she had shared an ensemble role with. She still remembered many of their names, but in the whirlwind after she had recieved the part of Cinderella she hadn't gotten time to talk to any of them anymore. She couldn't talk to them now, either. Lunch time over the past few weeks had not been fun. Instead of talking with her friends Christine had taken to reading her script and music over and over again with the blocking in it just to make sure she had it all down. She wouldn't stop obsessing over it because she was just too worried that she would mess up on stage.

Christine sighed. She probably had twelve, most likely closer to ten minutes until showtime. She was far from ready. But she knew who would always be ready, her voice. The dressing room for the featured and lead female characters had been emptied. Everyone else had already gotten themselves together and were getting to positions on stage, in the wings. She knew they would start looking for her soon, but there was something important she had to do first. Christine had someone important she had to talk to first.