In the Spotlight (6 page)

I burst out laughing, but was sincerely glad that Mr.

Reynolds had blown the whistle.

****

Somehow, I made it through the rest of the day without spilling the beans that Josh had gotten the role of Chad, or that I even knew who Ms. Bard had chosen for the leads.

After school, Hayley was waiting impatiently for me at the car, glaring pointedly at her watch as I approached. “Where have you been?” .

I glanced at my phone. “Um, Hays, we’ve only been out of school for three minutes. I had to stop by my locker,” I replied, trying to keep the amusement out of my voice.

She rolled her eyes at me, tapping her foot as I unlocked the car. “I have to run home and change for the game,” she informed me.

“Aren’t you wearing your uniform?” I asked, glancing over at her in confusion.

“Seriously, Hannah!” grumbled Hayley. “Don’t you know anything? We’re never allowed to wear our actual uniforms to school.”

“So why don’t you just bring it with you?” I asked as I gently eased the car out into the flow of traffic.

Hayley rolled her eyes at me again. “I have to do my hair,”

she said, as if that explained everything.

“So, is Mike taking you back to school for the game?” I asked after a few blocks of silence.

Sighing, Hayley said, “You are.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are,” Hayley repeated slowly. “You told Mom you would.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Hayley shrugged. “Tell that to Mom. She said you’d give me a ride. So you are giving me a ride.”

“Fine.” All I wanted to do was flop down on my bed with some good music and a good book and ignore the world for a few hours. I didn’t want to haul my princess-‐-y little sister back to her precious cheering. “How long do I have before your highness needs to be back?”

“Oh, you have, like, half an hour at least,” Hayley said as I pulled into the garage.

Still grumbling under my breath, I shut off the ignition and stalked into the house ahead of Hayley, who was blissfully oblivious to my annoyance. Heck, maybe she wasn’t oblivious, maybe she just got a really big kick out of it. She flounced off to preen in front of a mirror.

I stopped in the middle of the kitchen, dumped my backpack on the island, and grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl.

At least I had time to have a snack so I wouldn’t starve to death. I took a huge bite just as my phone began to vibrate. I grabbed it out of the zippered pocket on my bag and was relieved to see it was a text message not an actual call.

It was from Claudia. How the heck did she get my number?

I tried to recall when I might have given it to her, but forced myself to focus on her message:
OMG! Kyle’s so sad. What should I do?

Um…what should she do indeed…I mean, we weren’t even friends really, so why was she asking me for advice? I chewed on my banana as I pondered how to respond. If I ignored the text, I just looked mean. If I gave her actual advice, I promoted our friendship and drove her into Kyle’s grateful arms, or potentially messed things up for Kyle further. Not to mention I might drop a hint as to the fact that I’d gotten the lead role.

Still, it simply broke my heart that Kyle was so sad about not getting the lead. I mean, he wrote the script. He’d probably poured so much of himself into Chad. It sort of made me wonder why he hadn’t put more of himself into the audition. I quickly shook that thought away. Maybe I could still talk to Ms. Bard and get her to change her mind about the casting decisions. She’d probably still be at the school when I took Hayley back. And if I could convince her to give Kyle the part, he’d totally fall in love with me.

I was waiting and ready by the time Hayley came down stairs, looking perky although no different than she had after school.

“Ready?” I grinned at her.

“What’s wrong with you?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.

I sighed. “Nothing, geez. I realized that I have to go back to school anyway, so it’s no big deal now.”

“Oh.”

We got in the car, and Hayley began to quietly curse the broken heating system. Finally, she said, “When are your callbacks

?”

I nearly ran a red light. Hayley never paid attention to my activities. When I glanced at her, eyebrows off my face, she merely shrugged and said, “Mike mentioned that you were really good at your audition, so I just wondered…”

“Um, well, callbacks start tomorrow for some of the parts, but, yeah, I don’t really think they’re necessary for me,” I said, before clamping my mouth shut abruptly, realizing I’d already said too much. But, man, did I want to share my news with someone other than just Kaylee. Well, and Josh. And Kyle. I guess a lot of people knew.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hayley’s face light up. “So you already know? You got the lead, didn’t you? Mike was sure you would.”

I was taken aback by Hayley’s enthusiasm, but it felt nice. I grinned and nodded, “But it’s a big secret. No one’s supposed to know until Friday, or Ms. Bard might kill me.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Hayley promised. “Not even Mike, but if he guesses, I probably won’t tell him he’s wrong or anything.”

“Just don’t hint at it too strongly or anything,” I replied, still smiling stupidly. I couldn’t help feeling a teeny bit special.

Hayley nodded and grinned happily out the window. She really was the hardest person to read. Forty-‐-five minutes ago, she’d been a scowling mess, and now she was an uber-‐-cheery, well, cheerleader.

“It’s really exciting, though,” she said after a few moments of silence. “I mean, when was the last time a junior got the lead?

Who got the male lead? Is it Kyle? Wait, you probably don’t know.

And if you do, you aren’t supposed to tell, right? Of course not, duh.”

I shrugged, hoping that the gesture came off as suggesting that I didn’t know a thing about the male lead, not that I was trying to play coy and hoping she’d guess. Thankfully, Hayley let it drop as we pulled into the school parking lot.

I headed back into school with Hayley not entirely sure what I hoped to accomplish now that I was here. My gumption had drained out of me. Healing Kyle’s wounded ego suddenly didn’t appeal to me at all.

“Are you going to watch me cheer?” Hayley asked. “Or do you have to go straight to rehearsal?”

“I think I’ll come watch you cheer,” I said, surprising both of us. “We don’t have any rehearsals until next week, you know, after callbacks.”

“Duh, of course,” Hayley grinned. “What was I thinking?”

When had my little sister become a person? I shook my head at myself as she headed off to join the other blondes on the squad.

Somehow, I just didn’t think she fit with all of them. But what did I know?

Entering the gym, my eyes automatically trailed over the basketball players, and I experienced a burst of heat when I caught sight of Josh warming up. His bruised shin had healed nicely from what I’d heard, and he hadn’t missed too many games. Instead of heading up by the band, I settled myself on the bleachers right behind the players’ bench, not something I’d ever done before, I promise. I told myself that I wanted to have a good view of the court so I could really watch Hayley cheer. It was the least I could do after she’d been so excited for me about my getting the lead in the musical.

I felt a little thrill go through me as the basketball players jogged back to the bench for their pre-‐-game huddle. Even if I didn’t want to admit it, I was doing what dozens of other girls did, and was trying nonchalantly to watch Josh without being totally obvious.

So I don’t need to go into extreme detail about the flare of excitement that literally shot through me when Josh caught my eye, grinned, and gave me a little wave. I pretended not to notice. How could I flirt with Josh when he had totally stolen the part right out from under Kyle? Josh waved again. Dude, he was persistent.

That’s when I caught sight of Belle out of the corner of my eye, waving to Josh frantically. So he hadn’t been waving to me after all, just to his flavor of the week. That’s good, I told myself. I didn’t want to have to deal with a friendly Josh anyway. This just made it easier to remember why I didn’t like him in the first place.

Still, I couldn’t help but admire the way Josh played basketball. Even with their winning season winding down and a guaranteed spot in the play-‐-offs, Josh played hard, like it was the most important game of the season. And even though he was clearly the team’s star, he played to make the other players shine.

How can you not admire that?

I actually enjoyed watching the game away from the drama and gossip of the band. When halftime rolled around, I felt like it was the first game I’d seen all season.

Chapter Six

My after-‐-school job at Jimmy’s Red Hots could hardly be called taxing. Mainly I sat around in my polyester yellow and green uniform–which reminded me of Bert from Sesame Street–and did my homework. Jimmy, the owner, rarely even showed up until the

“dinner rush” as he called it, so that left me and Madison to handle the massive onslaught of ravenous college students who descended on us every afternoon. Okay, that is such an exaggeration. We normally saw two or three regulars a day during my shift, and they were all nervous, slightly dorky college boys who stopped in between classes, mainly to stare at Madison.

Madison was great most days. She was a junior at the university majoring in theater, so we had a lot in common. I was pretty sure Jimmy had hired her because of her looks, not her stellar line cook abilities. But no one ever complained if their hot dog was a little well done. And as long as no one got food poisoning, Jimmy was happy. Let me just say that I never touched the food at work, unless I made a fresh batch of French fries, which was all the cooking Jimmy let me do.

“So, how did your audition go?” Madison asked, wiping her hands on her apron. She came out of the kitchen and leaned on the counter by me. One of the aforementioned geeky college boys sitting a few stools away from us began to openly gawk at Madison’s rather ample cleavage accentuated by a uniform that I suspected was at least two sizes too small. I blushed and tried to focus on my history homework. The way Madison didn’t care if the guys stared at her made me uncomfortable.

“Earth to Hannah,” Madison said, poking me in the arm.

I glanced up from my history book. Talking about the musical was much more enticing than reading about the economics of the Revolutionary War.

“Oh, you know,” I said as casually as I could. “I sort of got the lead without even doing a callback.”

Madison’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?” She squealed. “Oh, Hannah, congratulations! I’m so proud of you!”

Before I knew what was happening, Madison had wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug that crushed my ribs and made it difficult to breathe. The guy who had been staring at Madison’s cleavage gave me an envious look, and if I’d been able to breathe, I seriously would have insisted that he take my place.

When she let me go, I gasped for air. “Thanks. I’m pretty excited about it.”

Madison sighed happily and leaned against the counter again. It struck me as weird that one of the things I’d admired about Madison in the beginning was her ability to switch emotions so quickly. Now I just found her overly dramatic.

“So tell me,” she said, “how did this all happen. I thought you said that only seniors got lead roles at your school.”

I shrugged. “That’s how it’s always been. This year we’re doing an original show written by one of the seniors as his senior project. So I guess Ms. Bard decided to change the rules.”

Returning to my seat at the counter, I opened my history textbook again. My mind wandered to Ms. Bard’s final challenge to us in drama class earlier that day. Somehow I had to turn my life into a fairy tale, and write it up as a short play as our semester project. Although, to be fair, my life seemed a lot like a fairy tale lately. But which one?

****

There was something unsatisfying about telling everyone before the official cast list went up. I resolved to tell my parents, at least, when I got home from my shift.

Except that I didn’t. Harlow called during dinner weeping and wailing because her professor in her improv class hadn’t chosen her for the improv night that week. And she
always
got chosen! So Mom and Dad spent several hours calming her down.

The last thing I could bear to hear was Mom cooing to Harlow about the immense talent that her professor was obviously overlooking to make the other students feel less inferior. Gag me.

I didn’t tell them the next day either. Instead, I studied my script. I stayed up far too late reading and highlighting. The next day in homeroom, I felt groggy, so I decided not to start any homework. I pulled out my script again to look over a few scenes that felt odd to me.

“Hey, do we just sit wherever we want or are the seats assigned?” I glanced up from my script to see Josh standing hesitantly beside my seat.

“We just sit where we want,” I replied. Josh nodded and dropped into a seat next to me. “Not to be rude or anything, but why are you here?”

Josh smiled. “Ms. Bard wanted me to switch into drama since I got Chad, and the semester break was the perfect time. All my classes got shifted.”

“Are you going to be in choir too?” I asked, knowing Ms.

Bard had probably wanted him to have extra practice in that too.

He nodded and pulled out his schedule. I glanced at it out of curiosity. This was one of the first conversations we’d had. From what I could see of my schedule, Josh was suddenly in six of my eight classes. Whoa. That might not work out so well. Maybe I could talk to my counselor.

No, I chided myself. That was just stupid. I could handle seeing Josh that much, couldn’t I? What’s the worst that could happen, right? I could fall in love with him and get my heart broken. Yeah, right. A guy like Josh wasn’t ever going to be interested in a girl like me. Wait. I wanted Kyle to be interested in me. So where had that thought about Josh come from?

I was about to delve into that line of thought when Claudia came bounding through the door. “Oh my gosh! Josh! What are you doing here?” She gushed happily as if the two of them had been best friends for years.