Sea Foam

Chapter Two

"Hey, Athlete-Who-Doesn't-Belong-In-the-Auditorium!"

Arielle stopped walking in the middle of the hallway. There was no way the same voice from yesterday was talking about her, right?

"Hey!" Eric ran in front of Arielle, breathing heavily. "Wow, you actually stopped, I didn't really think that would work."

"What do you want?" Arielle asked, resuming walking.

"Your name," Eric said as he followed behind her. "I asked Vanessa yesterday, but I doubt your name is really Dumb Loser."

Of course Vanessa would do something childish like that.

"Don't you have class?" Arielle asked, ignoring the question. "How do you have time to follow me?"

"Yeah, but it's in the same direction. See?" he pointed towards the classroom that was directly opposite Arielle's.

Terrific.

"So, are you going to tell me your name or not? I can go first, if you want. Hi, I'm Eric Price."

"Huh?" Arielle pretended not to have heard as she looked away. "Well, I'm going to class now. Hope we don't speak to each other ever again." She quickly speed-walked into her AP Psychology class and quickly sat in her seat.

"What's the rush?" Bonnie Blake, Arielle's third period partner and member of the school's female varsity basketball team, looked over from her binder. "You didn't do the homework?"

"Uh, no. Sorry, you can go back to what you're doing."

Bonnie nodded before resuming copying the homework due today.

Arielle leaned back in her seat, tapping her finger against the table. Why was Eric Price so interested in her? He now knew about the feud between artists and athletes, so why was he still talking to her?

". . . going great, actually! We've already decided who Romeo is going to be, but we're still working on Juliet. We've got a couple of good candidates, though."

Arielle focused her attention on the two girls in front of her, Cathy and Brianna. They were both artists and members of the Musical Committee.

"Really?" Brianna asked Cathy. "I thought we had already decided on Vanessa as Juliet."

Vanessa, as in Vanessa Arulus? Arielle scoffed at the thought of someone like her having the lead role. Although her acting was, as much as Arielle hated to admit it, better than average, her attitude would probably make more than half the crew want to quit the show, which was the equivalent of literally killing themselves.

"Do you have something you'd like to say to us?" Cathy and Brianna turned around in their seats to look at Arielle with not-so-pleasant expressions on their faces.

Arielle only shrugged. "I don't know," she said in a casual tone, "I just thought it would be . . . amusing, for lack of better word, to see Vanessa play Juliet. Can she even sing and move around at the same time?"

"I'll have you know that Vanessa can out-perform you at any time!" Brianna snapped with her eyes narrowed. "Our only problem is the questionable lack of chemistry with Eric, who's going to play Romeo."

Cathy quickly elbowed her. "Why would you tell her that?" she hissed. "If Vanessa finds out you told her that . . ."

"Look, both of you." Bonnie also joined into the conversation. "We don't care what Vanessa will do to you or what happened in the musical. Arielle wasn't serious when she asked you guys the question." She looked over at Arielle. "Right?"