Stage Doors

The Way it Began

It starts like this: Rose Marie Fredericks was born in 1998, a beautiful baby girl. As soon as she could speak, she was in vocal lessons. As soon as she could waddle around the room without toppling over midstep, she was in dance lessons. Janie Fredericks and Derek Fredericks had been theater nerds their whole lives, as well, so it was no surprise when Rose Marie Fredericks was, too.

I had only been raised this way.

So yes, Rose Marie Fredericks is me. Usually I go by Rose, Rosie if we're close, and nothing but Rose Marie from my parents.

"It's the name we gave you. It's the name we'll use." They say, as if it was their mantra. Janie is lovely, tall and slender with a slight English accent from the 17 years she spent there, until she moved to this pathetic excuse for a city. With my father, Derek, super tall with a slight Midwestern accent and a dark brown beard. I guess it was true love or something. Love has never been a strong suit of mine. I'm good at pirouettes and standing on my tippy toes for extended periods of time. I'm good at belting high notes that most people could hardly hit, much less hold for as long as I can.

I am highly aware of who I am, and how I came to be. I am good at being on top. I am great at being the best.

Not that that's a huge feat in this sad town. My goal is to get to New York. It'll probably take me years. I may be the best here, but out there? In the real world? I'll hardly stand a chance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not, like, arrogant. Yes, I know I'm pretty, I know I'm really good at what I do. But I'm not good at math and it takes me 6 hours at least to write an essay. As a matter of fact, most of my friends are underachievers.

Let's begin with Ari. Her full name is Arielle Stranson. She's really smart but she doesn't care enough about school to really work. She's an artist, mostly painting and sculpting. While my outfits are carefully planned, she decides what to wear 5 minutes before she has to leave. She gets hardly any sleep, and as a result there are always dark circles and make up smudges under her eyes.

Second, there's Natalie Leo. Ari is 5'11", and I'm decently shorter than her. Nat, on the other hand, is 5'1" with a black pixie cut and usually wears all black and striped socks that peak out over her combat boots. She looks like Tinkerbell's rebellious teenager stage, honestly.

So we walk in to school, in the order we're used to. Me, to the right of Nat, Ari rushing to catch up because she's late as usual, jeans ripped at the knees, hair in a messy, mousy brown, bun, my heels clicking on the ground. We separate halfway down the hall, to go to our own classes. Nat and Ari hate school. They have free periods at the beginning of the day because they can hardly function until they've had at least an hour to do nothing.

I have my drama class. Which is perfect and great because a very special day is coming up soon. So I walk past the commons. Past like, 50 classrooms and a million lockers and down a staircases and to the left, where the drama room awaits me. There are 4 little steps into the room and a short walk to my seat. I sling my bag over my chair and join the other drama girls in the far right corner of the room. There's El, there's Maggie, cruelly nicknamed Maggot by the disqusting jocks who are probably laughing at some poor nerds in their math class. Unlike me, Maggie loves school. She works hard and rewards herself with Drama. She's really good, too. So we talk and laugh and the teacher walks in.

Ms. Delavinci, or Ms. D, as most of us call her, is equally strict and fun. I'm sure she was beautiful in her day, but today she wears a garish purple scarf over an elaborate, emerald green dress and boots that go up to her knees. She's fun once you know her, and as I've been in her class for 3 years now, not to mention 3 different musicals and 3 different spoken plays, we know each other very well. So she sits at her desk and waits for the bell to ring, watching something on her laptop and occasionally stopping to write notes in her huge notebook. And then he enters the room.

Easily the most annoying, most awful, most fascinatingly incredible guy ever walks in. Eric Dean. He's almost as good as I am, only male. Almost as good as I am, only really good at Math, really good at English, really good at Science, my personal worst, perfect in every single way and equally horrible. This man has stolen parts from me (he's incredibly comfortable in ridiculous, female roles, which I find mildly insulting,) he's stolen the attention from me, he stole my friends. Evan Smith was my best male friend until Eric Dean turned him against me. He took him and turned him into what I never wanted him to be.

The bell rings and we all go to our seats.