Falling Fast (Louis Tomlinson AU)

Chapter 1

I stared out of the minibus window. It was raining and the pavements were a glistening grey. The houses and sky above were a softer, paler grey. Grey. Dull. Boring. Like me. Like my life.

Maybe today would change everything.

Maybe.

Carli peered past me. 'I think we're nearly there,' she said. 'So Tommi... you decided yet if you're gonna try for it?'

I swallowed. 'It' meant Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. We were on our way to auditions at DSFB - a local secondary school for boys that had invited Year 10s and 11s from our girls school ironically named DSFG (clever thinking whoever made that one up) to try out for the female parts in the play.

Juliet was the main girls part, of course. But that wasn't why I wanted it. I looked out the window again. The rain was falling harder now. I could hear it drumming on the minibus roof eve over the excitable chatter inside. There were about fifteen of us, mostly girls doing drama GCSE with Ms Yates (A/N: shout out to my drama teacher xD) or in her after-school drama group. For everyone else, I was sure the auditions were just a laugh.

But not to me. I wanted to be Juliet in the play, because I wanted to be Juliet in real life. I wanted to be in love. To be loved. I was just sixteen and I'd never met a boy I really liked. I mean , I'd met a few I'd quite fancied and more than a few who were fun to chat to. But I'd never felt what you could possibly describe as love. I had spent a lot of time imagining it though. Imagining what he would look like. Tall and square-jawed, I thought. With deep, soft brown eyes that would melt me with their gaze, and dark, wavy hair curling into the nape of his neck. He wouldn't be able to take his eyes off me. We'd move toward each other like magnets. Then we would talk and talk, discovering all the things we had in common, sharing our hopes and fears and dreams. And then, finally, we would kiss. A slow, deep, romantic...

'Hel-lo, Tommi.' Carli's amused voice broke through my thoughts.

'Are you going to audition for Juliet or not?'

I glanced and Carli's heart-shaped, dimpled face. My best friend had a sharp prettiness - all sparkling dark eyes and dramatically-long, shiny and dark hair. Unlike me, she was relaxed and confident. She was the obvious choice for Juliet. But I knew she was the wrong one. Whoever played Juliet had to at least be able to imagine what it would be like to fall in love with someone else. I was pretty sure Carli was no more able to do that than she was to stop flirting with men. 'Don't see why not' I shrugged, trying to look unbothered about the whole audition situation. 'I mean, if you are going for a speaking part, you might as well try for all of them, I don't really care who I end up playing.'

Carli grinned, 'Yeah, right, Tom.'

 I shrugged again and went back to the window. My face burned. Trust Carli to have seen right through me.

The minibus was pulling into a huge, mostly empty car park. Directly in front stood a large concrete school block. It looked deserted. I checked the time on my phone. 4 p.m.

'Guess all the boys have gone home' Carli said. She sounded disappointed.

'Good' I stood up and joined the queue to get off the minibus. 'The last thing we need is an audience.'

Carli laughed. 'Isn't an audience exactly what we are here for?'

We got off the minibus and milled awkwardly in the car park. The rain had lightened to a soft drizzle. The absolute worst kind of weather for my hair, which gets all frizzy at the first sigs of moisture. A tall, very thin man with a high forehead and slicked back dark hair came striding towards us. A boy in DSFB school uniform of black trousers, white shirt and black-and-green striped tie trotted beside him. Ms Yates smiled nervously. 'That's Mr Nichols, the head of drama.' she said.