Magnetic

Chapter Twenty-Three

The lights above the stage were giving me a pounding headache.

We'd been practicing the play for three hours so far. Class time wasn't enough for us; we were practically forced to stay after school to perfect our lines.

I knew my lines forwards and backwards, but occasionally I'd mess up due to someone else forgetting their lines, which would throw off the entire rehearsal.

It was terrible when someone forgot a cue line, and everyone would look over at me, as if it was my turn.

I'd respond with a look that would say, Not yet, buddy.

Most of the people in my drama class pissed me off; only a handful were serious enough about the play to actually try to work to make it presentable.

At it's current state, not a single person would want to pay to see it.

Mrs. Dunbar was sitting on a plastic classroom chair on the front of the stage, her head in her hands, reading over the notes she had made the previous week about each of our performances.

"Nicki, you're doing fine. Alexander, you keep messing up your blocking. Tammy, you need to read your full lines. Only saying a sentence of your line that is a paragraph isn't enough and will lead to the audience being left out on most of the information. And, half your lines are Nicki's cues, so you need to memorize the whole paragraphs," she said, scribbling something in the margin of her paper. She'd been a nervous wreck for the past week over something. We still had about three weeks until we started performing, but we hadn't practiced with lighting, costumes, sound, or props yet.

Alexander sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I'm trying, but the blocking is odd. No one would move like that; it's very unnatural."

"It's what's in the script, so, therefore, you do it." Mrs. Dunbar stood up and walked off of the stage, into the house seats.

He looked over at me, as if to see whether I agreed with him or not. I shrugged, not wanting to get involved, and made my way offstage.

Tammy yanked my arm as I started toward the steps, pulling me back. "Nicki, I need to talk to you."

I looked over at her, my heart pounding because she startled me. "About what?" I asked.

She ran a hand through her long, blue-black hair and pursed her naturally pink lips at me. I had learned she was one of the most popular juniors at West Cliff High School, something I could've figured out without anyone telling me. She had the fake-high voice you associate with the stereotypical popular girls, makeup that caused her to resemble a clown, and expensive outfits that were designed to look cheap. "I think you need to memorize my lines."

"What?" I wasn't sure I had heard her right. If I had, that would've been the most ridiculous thing that had ever come out of her mouth. I'd had this class with her for over a semester, so I had quite a bit of ridiculous quotes to compare it to.

Tammy rolled her eyes. Since the day I met her, I disliked her. She was one of those people that believed that only halfway doing tasks would get her far in life, and due to this she always gave a very small amount of effort. There was no reason why I'd need to memorize her lines. It wasn't like I'd be the one to say them.

"I keep forgetting parts of them. So if I mess up your cue line, you'll still know when to talk."

For some reason, this made me so mad that I almost started to laugh.

"Maybe you should memorize your own lines. I remember you begging for this part, so to keep it, you should put in the work." I crossed my arms and lifted an eyebrow, which Tammy didn't seem phased by one bit. It seemed like she was used to people standing up to her. Or else, she was playing it cool and was just that good of an actress. From the acting I've seen from her, I doubted the latter.

She smiled sweetly, as if that could get me to agree with her. "I mean, you have an amazing memory. You could remember mine in a heartbeat." She placed her hand on my arm, and said, "It wouldn't just help me, it'd help the both of us. Since you're such an amazing actress, it'd make you seem that much better."

"Flattery," I began, pushing her hand off of me, "will get you absolutely nowhere."

This she seemed shocked by, raising both of her dark eyebrows at me. "That isn't flattery. If I was trying to flatter you, I'd say that I liked your hair or outfit or something. But I wouldn't be able to say that, since it'd be a lie, and in case you haven't noticed, I'm one of the most blunt people you'll ever meet." She giggled and made her way down the steps, meeting with a group of three other insanely-popular students, leaving me alone, on the side of the stage, wondering what just happened.

Oh, how I hated Tammy.