Simmons's Journal

Tuesday, August 16

Hey journal. At lunch today, Donut brought in a stack of flyers advertising auditions for the musical on Friday. He had apparently been delivering them to members all morning.

"So Simmons, I'm sorry, but auditions are the same time as Mathletes on Friday, so you might miss your first meeting." Donut apologized.

"Oh, you can miss one stupid meeting." Grif urged. His concern in the matter was weird, until he whispered, "Hey, if I'm gonna suffer through these auditions, you're gonna suffer with me." Oh. Right.

"I don't know..." I began, but the pleading look on Donut's face was all it took to convince me. I sighed. "All right, I guess. But only one meeting."

"Of course! Oh, Simmons, these auditions are going. To be. GREAT." Donut exclaimed. "Hey, you should try out for the lead!" Was he still talking to me?

"Um, I'm not so sure about that..."

"Why not? Evan is SO. YOU."

"Yeah, but a lead role? I'm not sure I could handle that."

"That is EXACTLY what Evan would say. See? You're perfect!"

While I'm not entirely sure Donut understood what I can't handle that meant, I had to appreciate that he already had me pegged. I struggled to think of an excuse. Luckily Sarge intervened.

"Donut, wouldn't you want to play the main character? Y'know, since you're the one who's into all the Broadway whatchamacallits?"

"Sarge, I love you sweetie, but please. First of all, I'm more of a Heidi Hansen myself. Alright? Secondly, I'm still gonna try out for Evan, but I don't have any decent competition anymore! Now, don't get me wrong, I still hope they get good parts, but can you picture Smith or Palomo as Evan Hansen? Of course not."

Sarge went silent, seemingly struggling to process what he'd just heard.

Grif and I lost it. Between chuckles, Grif managed to speak.

"Donut- did you just call Sarge- sweetie?"

Sarge seemed oddly unfazed by our reaction, continuing to eat despite our incredibly loud laughter drawing attention from nearby tables. The Blues even sent Tucker over as a representative to figure out what was going on.

After regaining our composure, Donut explained a few things about each character that he thought should influence which character we try out for. Like Evan's "entire personality" for me, Connor's attitude for Grif, and Heidi's "great spirit" for himself. Apparently he's put a lot of thought into this.

Later, in history, I asked Doc about the potential of Donut's matchmaking abilities.

"Knowing him, he's definitely working on something, but I doubt he's gotten to you yet. He knew Carolina for a year before he set her up with York." Doc assured.

Although it was helpful talking to Doc, it turned out that I hadn't needed to. In English, Donut passed me a note (written in pink glitter pen, unsurprisingly,) to ask me for help with "a sociology project."

"Donut, you don't take sociology." I whispered.

"I could..."

"But you don't. We compared schedules after we met, remember?"

"You caught me. Anyway, can you find out if Wash is doing anything Saturday? I'm getting him and Tucker movie tickets and I can't ask both of them or it'll be suspicious."

"And me asking them won't be?"

"Good point. Nevermind."

Great, I'm off the hook! For now at least.

Guess I need to wrap this up, because Donut told me I need to pick an audition song. Apparently even if you don't want a big singing part you still have to sing for your audition, and Donut made it very clear that 1) everyone would be singing Dear Evan Hansen, so I needed to "be original," and 2) he pushed Something Rotten too far, and the teacher would be sick of hearing about it by now.

Y'know, it's funny. These musicals are actually starting to grow on me. Maybe someday I will end up a theater geek like Donut...

Yeah, nevermind. No one but him could be that into musicals.