A Rising Star

Chapter 21 - The First Rehearsal

December 11

I skipped along until I came upon the large brick building that I was so familiar with.

I had been told to enter through the stage door, whatever that was. I did a lap around the building before finding a black, wooden door with STAGE DOOR engraved in gold on it. Well, that must be it.

My heart beat wildly. It was a mixture of excitement, restlessness, extreme curiosity, and fear, all enclosed in one tiny blood-pumping box inside of me.

I wanted to just casually explode.

I opened the door, which gave a loud creeaaaakkk.

Inside, I discovered a small but fascinating room covered with mirrors and lights. There were counters in front of the mirrors, and two staircases lurked behind half-open doors that I tried to follow up all the way with my eyes. 

Staring at the wall in front of me, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and rammed right into someone, causing a bundle of paper to fly into the air.

I gasped. "I'm so sorry!!" I apologized vigorously, before looking up to meet the face of what I had disrupted.

Phew. It was just Lizzie.

I bent down to help her retrieve everything that had fallen. She was able to laugh it off, though I continued to apologize immensely.

"Here ya go, hun," she said, handing me one of the packets of paper. Les Miserables Full Script.

I couldn't contain my excitement and let out a squeal.

Lizzie indicated a door to my left that I hadn't yet noticed where I was to go for the read-through. I assumed it meant we would read through the script.

I obeyed and stepped into the next room.

I took in who was there. I noticed that Christine Bennett girl who Carter had said was so famous. I wondered which role she had gotten; she looked the part of either Fantine or Eponine.

I also saw a hand waving at me frantically. I shifted my attention to it and saw it attached to the face of Carter. My face lit up and I rushed to talk to him.

"You made it!!" I cried. "I knew you would! You got Gavroche, didn't you?"

"Yeah!! You called that one! Which did you get??" he asked all in a rush, clearly relieved I had made the cut and just as excited as I was about being here.

"I'm young Eponine!" I declared proudly. He seemed astonished.

He gestured to two chairs sitting next to each other at the table, which nearly touched wall-to-wall in the spacious room. "C'mon! Sit with me!!" he practically pleaded.

He didn't have to ask me twice. I sat in the one on the right, and Carter sat on my left. I laid my script on the smooth silver table in front of me and took a second to admire the beige background of the paper and the brown text typed onto it. I opened to the first page. I was obviously the first one to open it; the crack of the binding was a beautiful sound.

I flipped through it to see where young Eponine was, and if she had lines. I continued to skim until I found the page with Young Eponine on it - the same page used at callbacks. I read that whole page, then the entire page after it and before it. It looked like I had no lines, but at least one scene.

As I continued to scan the pages of musical number after musical number, I realized that there were no lines at all. Just song after song. Huh.

About twenty minutes later, the door slammed closed after a girl around my age entered dramatically, followed by Robert, Lizzie, and Jacob. It seemed it was time for the first rehearsal to begin.