Cinderella Sidelined (16 page)

I sort of wish I had a hood or something I could tug over my face because this is all kinds of embarrassing.

I'm busying myself with my phone in my lap, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone who might see me and wonder what the heck Emma Thompson is doing on the bleachers alone during a pep rally, when the crash of a cymbal startles me out of my own world.

The cymbal is the start of the marching band's performance and soon it's too loud out here to hear myself think. I watch in silence as the band gives way to the cheerleaders running onto the field from the tunnel, shaking their pom-poms and yelling who-knows-what. The football team isn't far behind, and I watch to catch sight of Blaine or the number on the back of his jersey.

But everyone is moving too quickly and there are too many people already gathered on the field for me to spot him. I shrug and return my attention to my phone, knowing the coach is about to make a speech that's not really of much interest to me.

And then something hits my back and I jump and whirl around.

"What the --?"

"Howdy."
 

Russ is grinning from the row of bleachers behind me.
 

I smile and feel my shoulders sag with relief. I've never been so happy to see someone whose name I actually know.
 

"Hey you!"

His eyebrows flicker up ever so slightly. "Someone's happy to see me."

"You have no idea."
 

"Didn't expect to find you up here. Figured you'd been down on the field with the rest of your kind."
 

"Not today."

"I hope it's not because of what happened the other night," he tells me, looking like he feels the exact opposite of what he's saying.

I shake my head. "No," I lie. "I just need a break, that's all."
 

"You're still coming to practice tonight?"

"Of course," I say, surprised he's even asking.
 

He smiles. "Good."
 

"You know, I never pegged you for the pep rally type."

"Emma, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Yeah, well, even you deserve a compliment every now and then," I fire back, and the left corner of his mouth twitches up, but he doesn't respond, so I glance back out over the field.
 

The coach is finished with his riveting speech and I scan the crowd for any sign of Blaine for the second time. Finally, my eyes land on his mop of blonde hair and it's not lost on me that just the sight of him isn't enough to make me smile giddily anymore.
 

He's mixed in with a sea of other football players and students, milling around on the field before Coach Pepp kicks them off for the start of practice, and I watch as Blaine walks right up to a familiar-looking blonde girl dressed in a tank top and way-too-short skirt. I can't remember where I've seen her before, but I watch as her face lights up when she sees him, and I watch as he leans in to give her a hug. I absently chew on my bottom lip as my eyes grow narrower and narrower, like honing in on them through tiny slits will somehow let me hear what they're talking about from two hundred feet away.

"Who's that?" Russ asks, but his voice sounds distant, like he's thousands of miles away, not right behind me.

"You don't recognize Blaine?"

"No, I mean the girl he's flirting with."
 

I swing my head away from the scene unfolding in front of me and glare at him. "He's not flirting."
 

Russ doesn't look phased. "You say potatoes, I say potatoes." He shrugs. "Besides, if he's not flirting, she definitely is."
 

I tilt my head and study them, feeling my blood pressure rise each time she reaches out and brushes her hand against his bare arm.
 

"Maybe," I mutter under my breath.

"No maybe about that," he says, letting out a low whistle.

I watch as she leans in for another hug, and it's suddenly like they're superglued together and are having a really hard -- and really ridiculous -- time getting untangled.
 

She smiles at Blaine one last time before she waves and bounces off down the field back toward the tunnel that'll take her to The Barn.
 

"Interesting," Russ says.

I glare at him. "It's nothing."
 

He raises an eyebrow. "If you say so. But if it were me, I wouldn't be so quick to bury my head in the sand over this."
 

I slowly run my tongue over my teeth as I consider his words and try to balance them with that I just witnessed with my own two eyes. No denying that. "No," I say at last. "Blaine and I have been together forever. It's natural that he'd be friends with other people."
 

"Yeah, I'm sure that's it," he says, getting to his feet. "Whadda ya say, Miss Halpern? Can we head to practice?"

"Sure, we can," I say, and he gets to his feet and takes a few steps away.

"Uh, Em?" he says, turning back when he realizes I'm not next to him. "You coming?"

"Oh, you want to go now? I didn't realize."
 

He gives me a weird look. "What'd you think I meant?"

"You said 'can,'" I tell him. "And yeah, I can. My legs work just fine. But you didn't ask if I will go to practice with you."
 

He squints at me, like he's not sure if he thinks I'm incredibly annoying or incredibly clever.

I laugh. "Sorry," I say at last. "It's my grammar pet peeve."
 

"You're something else. Okay, I'll try again. Will you go with me to practice?"

I smile and nod before standing. I've never been more ready to slip into another world in my life, even if it's only for a little while.
 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We don't have a good rehearsal.
 

And it kind of seems like not many of them are these days. It's not just me, either; I sit in the third row every afternoon after I'm finished with my scenes for the day and watch the rest of the cast run through their lines, and the whole thing is a world class trainwreck.
 

"This is a nightmare," I mutter to Russ.
 

For the first few days, he'd bolt right after practice, claiming there's no point for him to stick around and watch other people go over scenes that have nothing to do with him, but eventually he starts hanging out with me.

The grimace on his face suggests he probably regrets that decision now.

"The worst," he agrees.

Mary lets out a loud, dramatic sigh and signals to Jonah to cut the music that signals a pivotal moment I have nothing to do with halfway through the play.

"We are precisely three-hundred-and-thirty-two hours away from the very first performance of this play," she says, shaking her head and pacing the length of the stage. "That leaves us with, oh, about three-hundred-and-thirty hours to get this performance into presentable shape. Of course, only about twenty-five of those hours are actually available to us to use for the play. Does that scare you? It should. I know it keeps me up at night. If you're sleeping like a baby this week, then perhaps you should reconsider your commitment to the play. Because if we get up on there on stage on Opening Night like this, we'll get laughed straight out of the auditorium. And that is not what I'm here for."
 

She pauses and sucks in a deep breath, but no one dares to say a word.

"We've only even made it through three-quarters of the entire script!" Mary hasn't run out of steam yet. "It's pathetic! The worst bunch of rehearsals I have ever seen in my decades as a director at this level. No, in my decades as a director at all levels. The kindergarten play of '94 was more successful than this, and that cost me my job."
 

Russ makes some kind of noise that makes it sound like he's been strangled and I glance over at him, eyes wide, and see that he's trying not to laugh.

"Shhhhh," I hiss. "You're gonna attract the wrath of Mary."

He looks over at me and wiggles his eyebrows like he wouldn't mind getting into some trouble. And I have no doubt Russ is pretty good at finding it when he wants to.

"I'm about ready to throw in the towel!" Mary shouts, and I realize there's no chance she'd hear either me or Russ in her current state, anyway. "I can't watch this scene again. I'll throw up all over you! You, you, you, and you!" She points at each person standing up on the stage looking like they'd rather be getting a root canal from a middle schooler than standing here subject to Mary's crazy ranting. "Take a seat! We're moving forward! Figure out this mess on your own time. We have got to press on." She frantically flips through the script in her hands. "Miss Halpern! Prince Alex! Up on stage."

I stiffen as I sit up straight in my chair and shoot a panicked look at Russ. I'm not prepared for the shocked look that crosses his face. I quickly reach down for my tattered copy of the script sitting on the floor. It's taken three days for us to get through this single scene, and I don't think either of us expected Mary to move on without the others getting through their lines at least once.

In other words, Russ and I are screwed.

We slowly walk toward the stage like we're being forced to jump off the end of a plank into a shark-infested sea.

"Come on, come on, you're burning precious daylight," Mary snaps, and Russ and I exchange a look as we trudge up the steps on the side of the stage.
 

The spotlight feels particularly hot and uninviting today.

"Good," Mary says once we're up here, and she glances down at the script. "Good. This is one of the most important scenes in the entire play outside of the climax. It's when Miss Halpern finally admits to herself she has some sparkling chemistry with our prince and they seal it with their very first kiss."

The cough comes out of me before I can stop it, and before I know it, I'm having a full blown wheezing fit in the middle of the stage.

Mary rushes over to me with a water bottle, and as I take a gulp and try to get the sputtering under control, all I'm thinking about are the words that just came tumbling out of her mouth like they're no big deal at all.

"Are you alright?" she asks, looking at me with a raised eyebrow and a hand on her hip.
 

Russ, however, is kneeling down next to me, one hand resting on my back, as I drink in some more water. I try to nonchalantly shimmy away from his touch, which feels hard and heavy on my skin, and slide a foot over.
 

"Ye-yeah," I choke out with a sputter. "I'm good."
 

Mary grins widely, even if it's a smile that looks more like a wicked grimace. "Great! For a second there, I thought the idea of smacking lips with ol' Russell over here had you flustered."
 

We're all lucky I'm not in the middle of taking another sip of water because I have no doubt I'd spit it all out and start choking again if I had been when she says this. My eyes bug ever so slightly and I take a deep breath.

"Nope," I manage to say cheerfully without meeting Russ' eye. I'm really glad he isn't touching me right now. "It's just acting!"

"Fabulous," Mary chirps. "Love that can-do attitude, Emma." She claps her hands together three times. "Let's get down to business! Scripts to page forty-six!"

I stagger to my feet and feel lucky I don't stumble or fall over. Russ is hanging out about ten feet away from me, just off to stage left. I glance down at the directions on the script and see I'm supposed to be backstage for the first few minutes of the scene, so I happily scamper behind the curtains.

Once I'm out of sight, I let out a huge breath I don't even knowing I'm holding, blowing my hair out of my face. I wipe at the tiny beads of sweat that have prickled along my forehead and try to shake off the weird feeling that's taken root in my stomach ever since I first heard I'm about to kiss Russ.

Kiss. Russ.

Russ.

I can't wrap my head around the idea.
 

I mean, to start, there's the fact that I have a boyfriend! I can't go around kissing other guys, but it's all in the name of the play. And I guess I'm glad I'm finding out about it now, so I don't feel guilty for not telling Blaine it's going to happen.

I'll have to prep him before Opening Night, though. No need to give him that kind of a nasty surprise. I can just see him jumping to his feet in the middle of the play and shouting out for the whole thing to stop when Russ and I kiss.

Yeah, probably better not to take that chance.

"I wonder if I'm going to see Miss Halpern today!" I hear Russ say. I glance down at the script and start reading through the lines for my cue. Silence on stage, then Russ repeats, "I wonder if I'm going to see Miss Halpern today!"
 

I quickly scan the page then realize -- duh -- this is when I'm supposed to skip out onto the stage and pretend I don't see Prince Alex.
 

Oops.

I tuck the script under my arm since I obviously still need it to get through the scene and half-walk, half-run out from behind the heavy curtain. Russ gives me a what-the-heck-gives kind of look as soon as he sees me, but he doesn't break character to ask what's wrong with me, even though I'm pretty sure he wants to.

I offer an apologetic half-smile then wander aimlessly around the area behind him as Miss Halpern is supposed to do.

Russ continues with his role as Prince Alex, talking to several other people, before he finally "stumbles" upon Miss Halpern examining fruits and vegetables at the outdoor market.
 

"G'day," Prince Alex says, and Miss Halpern looks up in surprise, waving around her non-casted hand as if she's holding a fresh, ripe tomato as the script calls for.

"Oh," Miss Halpern says politely, giving a small curtsy. "Hello, sir."
 

Prince Alex shakes his head. "When are you going to give that a rest already? My father is sir. I'm Alex."
 

"I think I'll stick to sir, thanks."