The WRA Draft

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Phone Calls

I walked into the Gray Room with as much confidence as I could supply. Why was I nervous? I wasn't sure. I can't look affected by this. I took a seat next to Nora, only to be confronted by Clayton.

"Hey, Maria. How's it hanging?" he asked.

"Hanging?" I laughed. "Since when do you say stuff like that?"

"I don't know. I hear Olivia say it sometimes and she makes it sound really funny. Thought I'd give it a try."

"Why don't you leave the silly statements to her, then?" I felt a hatred for her return. I suddenly didn't really want to help her.

"Yeah, she says them better." Clayton nodded. For a brief second, I thought he felt the same way about her as I did, but then he added. "She can throw her voice in that really cool way where she says the sentence in different voice tones, you know? And she always smiles really wide and elbows you jokingly. She's gonna get class clown someday with the things she can do."

I nodded slowly. My hatred had disappeared now. "Yep."

The bell rang and Olivia walked to the front of the class. She seemed extra cheerful. "Hey, guys! You ready to work?"

Kids groaned.

She clapped her hands. "That's the spirit!" Mr. Kelsall and Mrs. Lancaster got a laugh out of it. She let her wide smile lessen and she looked at her agenda. "Yeah, me neither. Alright, well, today will be a little bit different. I have a buttload of calls to make and I'll be having Maria help me with them," She motioned to me. "so we'll be out in the halls doing that. I also have down here that Landon, Bradley, and Faith have an idea for our set design?"

Landon nodded. "Yep. We wanna run it over with you when you're not busy."

"We'll have to wait and see how time treats us. Taylor and Toby, you guys said you had an idea of an orchestra?"

"We found this cool group that travels around," Toby confirmed.

"What're they called?" She asked grabbing a pencil.

"They're an older group called the Traveling Notes of Pennslyvania."

Olivia stopped. "Uh, I'm not sure that's the best choice."

"Why?"

"They don't exist anymore."

"How do you know?"

"My cousin used to go with them but they stopped traveling. Toby, they broke up over ten years ago."

"They did?"

She laughs. "Yeah. Didn't you find anything about that online? Where'd you find them?"

Taylor laughed. "His grandfather showed him a video."

"Oh, poor Toby." Olivia put her head in her hands. I saw Toby's face go bright red.

"Sorry."

"It's alright; keep looking. Okay, so Camile said she had some designs for costumes; I'll look at those..."

She continued on speaking but I blocked her out until it was time to work. She left Clayton in charge and we walked out to the hallway.

"Alrighty," I clapped my hands together. "where do we start?"

Olivia took a seat on the floor. I joined her and watched her pull out a yellow notebook and her phone. "How'd those emails go?"

"Good," I answered. "I actually already have some responses. Mind if I get on your laptop and login to my email? I used mine to send the emails and just explained I was doing it for you."