Falling for you.

4

“Lovely, well done” Mr Claud spoke. “Now, Harry, the same again, only this time with Olivia.”

I blushed from hearing my name said in front of all the boys . . . in front of Harry. El stepped backwards and I took her place, my copy of the play trembling in my hands.

Harry was an arm’s length from me now. God, why was I so short? My eyes were level with his chest. His tie was lose and his shirt was untucked. As he read his lines, I could hear the same expressiveness I’d heard before. But this time I could tell he was only going through the motions. Like his mind was on something else. Eleanor probably.

I looked up into his face just as he said his last line.

“Let rich music’s tongue unfold the imagin’d happiness . . .”

Our eyes met. Oh my God. His gaze pierced right through me, like he was trying to see who I was .Who I really was. No one had ever looked at me like that. And his eyes were beautiful. Green. Bright green.

“. . . that both receive in either by this dear encounter.”

There was a pause. Damn. It was my turn. I had completely forgotten what the next line was. I bent over the play in my hand, searching desperately for it.

Harry’s finger landed on the page in exactly the right place.

I felt myself blush as I started reading. I put all the feeling I had into what I was saying. At first, I was too self-conscious to look up. When I finally did Harry was frowning slightly.

“. . . But my true love is grown to such excess . . .”

And then I realised why he must be looking puzzled. My voice has shrunk to a whisper.

In the same instant I knew why. Juliet was basically saying this incredibly intimate, powerful thing about how her love for Romeo was so huge that she couldn’t get her head around the half of it. And I was saying the lines as if it was just me and him in the room.

I immediately raised my voice. Way too loud.

“. . . I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.”

Harry jumped back, startled, presumably at the sudden rise in volume. Oh God.

After that it was hopeless. We tried another scene. I stumbled over the lines, then remembered the stain on my jumper and tried to cover it with my copy of the play.

By the time I had finished, Harry was staring at me like I was mad and giggles of amusement were floating around the room.

Mr Claud got Blair Peters to read with Harry, then we all trooped downstairs and back onto the bus.

I pretended to be cheerful on the way back to school, but inside I was dying. El kept saying that I’d done fine, but I knew she was just being kind. I’d made a complete mess of that second reading. Because of Harry. Because of the way he looked at me with those intense green eyes.

I struggled to put it out of my mind, joining in with El when she teased Blair about Darren, he boyfriend. Then teasing El myself about how much Liam Payne fancied her.

Neither of them teased me. Which meant that I really had made a total idiot of myself.

My one comfort was that El clearly thought I’d screwed up because I was nervous about getting the aprt, not for any other reason.

Three days later the four of us who’d been up for speaking parts got called into Mrs Clarke’s room. She made a big show of saying how we were representing the school and how she expected up to maintain the highest standards of behaviour whenever we went to rehearsals.

Danielle was Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother. Blair was Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother.

I held my breath.

And she said it.

Eleanor was Juliet. I was the nurse.

The Nurse. Short. Dumpy. Nice.

My heart sank.

You can’t fall in love with nice.