Mr. Gardner looked up from his notes as the three approached him. “Oh, Grizelda, Patricia… Kurt,” he greeted them. “How can I help you?”
“Kurt wants to try out for our play,” Patricia explained. “But he was late, so…”
Mr. Gardner stared at Kurt disapprovingly over the top of his glasses. “Kurt, you should know better than that. You cannot expect to be allowed to participate if you do not respect scheduled times and deadlines.”
Kurt shrugged. “Sorry, Mr. G.”
Mr. Gardner stared at Kurt silently for a moment. “However, since this is Patricia’s time and her play, it is up to her whether you are still allowed to audition.” He looked at Patricia and Grizz in turn. “What is your decision?”
“Oh, we totally think he should try out,” Grizz said enthusiastically, an innocent expression on her face.
Seeing Patricia nod demurely, Mr. Gardner eyed them both suspiciously. Patricia was sure he was on to their little scheme, and was relieved when he simply sighed and said, “Very well. I will be in my office catching up on grading. Please stop by when you are finished so that I can lock up.”
“Thank you, sir,” Patricia said sweetly. When Mr. Gardner walked away, she was pretty sure she heard him chuckle under his breath.
Turning to Kurt, she pulled a sheet of paper from her binder. “All right, get up on the stage and read for these two parts,” she instructed, highlighting the sections featuring the two male ghosts. “Grizz, will you read with him?”
“Sure thing,” Grizz replied, taking the audition sheet when Patricia offered it.
Patricia made herself comfortable, propping her feet on top of the seat in front of her. She wouldn’t have dared to do that if Mr. Gardner had been there, but since he had left them to their own devices… Time to have some fun.
Grizz started off, reading the lines of Mrs. Winchester very dramatically, bugging out her eyes in terror. “‘Please, spirits! What do you want with me?’”
Kurt froze, staring at the script for a few seconds. Patricia cleared her throat loudly. When he didn’t reply, she rolled her eyes and snapped, “Kurt, it’s your line. The one that starts with ‘We have come…’”
Kurt read the lines out loud woodenly. “‘We have come to take revenge for the blood the Winchester men spilled through the creation of their firearms. Blood in exchange for blood…’ Whoa, man, sounds brutal.”
Grizz stamped her foot and crossed her arms. “Really?”
“Stick to the script, please!” Patricia called up to the stage.
“But, Trixie, I can’t help it if I speak from my heart,” Kurt told her sincerely, grasping his puka shell necklace and gazing at her with wide hazel eyes.
Patricia slumped forward and covered her face with her hands. “Okay, Kirk, just try it again.”
Kurt stared at her blankly. “Uh, my name’s Kurt,” he replied, clearly missing the point.
Grizz shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, let’s get back to work, Kirk.”
Before he could argue, Grizz repeated, dramatically holding a hand to her forehead, “‘Please, spirits! What do you want with me?’”
“Uh,” Kurt began, blinking as he stared at the script, “‘We… we have come to take revenge for the blood the Winchester men spilled through the creation of their firearms! Bl-blood in exchange for—blood…’”
They ran through that scene many more times; Patricia knew full well that there was no way that he would get better, but she wanted him to see that having a part in the play was a lot harder than he thought—not to mention punish him for being over an hour late. Besides, how could she, in good conscience, sign off that he’d participated if she let him slack off?
After they’d done the scene to death, Patricia stood, clapping her hands. “All right, then.”
“Sweet. Are we done, Patsy?” Kurt asked, hopping off of the stage.
“No, Burt, now you need to read the part of James,” Patricia told him.
Kurt blinked at her in confusion—though whether it was because she’d called him “Burt,” or the fact that he had to go through that all over again, she wasn’t sure.
Patricia lifted a hand and waved him back up the steps. He took center stage again, staring at the script. “‘It was your family that, uh, tore me apart from my beloved…’”
“Say it with passion!” Patricia commanded, pointing her pen at him.
“O-okay,” Kurt mumbled, then heaved a sigh of frustration. “Ugh, I just—this is so lame. How can I even sound like I mean it? I mean, he’s being so sappy. Ghost needs to get laid.”
Grizz inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. “Just because you are an insensitive jerk doesn’t mean that someone wouldn’t be heartbroken dying in the arms of his one true love!”
“Uh…” Kurt began to back away from Grizz slowly, his dark eyebrows raising in surprise.
“And to top it all off,” Grizz continued, charging forward, her eyes narrowed dangerously, “Adeline then gets caught in the war, trying to seek justice, and is killed herself, by the same rifle that slew her beloved.” She closed her eyes dramatically, her glittery eye shadow dancing in the stage lights. “How could you live with yourself for all eternity knowing that?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
“Er… okay,” Kurt replied, frozen with fear at Grizz’s reaction. He held up his hands as if to defend himself. “Um, calm down…”
“Okay, I’ve seen enough,” Patricia intervened. “You can see the results on Monday. I’ll talk to you in drama class to let you know when we’ll meet up next.”
“Cool,” Kurt replied with a shrug, taking the stage steps two at a time before grabbing his bag and skateboard on his way out the door. “Catch ya on the flip side.”
As soon as he was out of earshot, Patricia raced up the stairs and met Grizz in the center of the stage. Holding out a hand to her arm, she asked sympathetically, “Are you okay? Sorry he was trashing on your script.”
Eyes still closed, Grizz took a deep, cleansing breath, lifting her hand and then bringing it down in front of her face as she exhaled. “I will not scream,” she whispered to herself. “I will not sabotage his surfboard. Murder is bad.”
“C’mon,” Patricia coaxed. “Let’s go binge on pizza. My treat!” Grizz opened one eye with interest.
As they left the auditorium, Patricia commented, “Either way, his acting sucks way more than I expected, so that’s out. The play would be ruined.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Grizz began loftily as they walked toward Mr. Gardner’s office, “I think he could really add some pizzazz to the play.”
Patricia stopped dead in her tracks. “Doing what?”
Seeing Grizz’s devilish smile, Patricia knew it was going to be good.
❦
The following Wednesday, Patricia stood in the auditorium and directed the cast members as they read their lines. “That’s good, Phillip. Just remember, you should stand right about here,” Patricia came over and marked his spot on the stage, “so that the audience will really be able to see your expression.”
Phillip Dizon nodded, assuming the proper place. He had been chosen to play the ghost James. “Got it, Patricia.”
“Okay, could you guys take it from the top, please?” Patricia asked, holding her clipboard and walking to the side of the stage.
Grizz came up beside her. “Forty minutes and he’s still a no-show,” she grumbled.
“I know,” Patricia said with a sigh. Grizz had described the back story of the characters to the actors while Patricia explained a little about what she wanted them to convey. She’d really wanted Kurt there so that she could show him the ropes of how the play worked, but since he still hadn’t arrived, she’d decided to have everyone start reading their lines. “I think we have to talk to Mr. Gardner. Nicole, can you talk just a little louder? I’m having trouble hearing you.”
“No problem,” Nicole Baker, who had been chosen to play Mrs. Winchester, agreed. She smiled and flipped amber bangs out of her eyes
with a toss of her head.
“Maybe he didn’t like the part we chose for him,” Grizz suggested with a sly grin once the actors had started reading again.
“No!” Patricia pretended to gasp, holding a hand to her chest. “We gave him the most important role of all!”
Grizz pulled out her cell phone. “Well, I’m sick of waiting. I’m not keeping everyone here late just because of him.” She snickered as she typed out a rather menacing text. Patricia watched gleefully over her shoulder.
Just as Grizz was about to hit send, the echoing sound of wheels rolling in the hall reached Patricia’s ears. She turned and saw Kurt roll into the auditorium just as he had the week before, bringing the board to a stop with his foot and kicking it up into his hands. “Hey,” he greeted Patricia and Grizz with a lift of his chin.
Patricia set her jaw. Facing Natalia, Peter, Nicole and Phillip, she clapped her hands for their attention. “Okay, take five everyone.”
Descending the stage steps, Patricia marched swiftly over to Kurt, who was balancing his skateboard on top of a closed theater seat. “Listen up,” she snarled, all her patience gone. “You were supposed to be here forty-five minutes ago. You do realize that showing up late just means you have to stay late, don’t you?”
Kurt ignored her, rummaging through his bag and producing his mp3 player and earbuds.
“Um, no!” Patricia snatched them from his hands.
“Why?” Kurt demanded, looking confused as usual. “You told us to take five!”
Patricia rolled her eyes. “I told them to take five so I could talk to you!”
Kurt ran a hand through his short thatch of brown hair. “About what?”
“About—” Patricia stopped herself, noticing the other actors watching with interest. She sighed and grabbed Kurt by the elbow. “C’mon back here with me.”
As soon as they were behind the curtain, Patricia said, “If you expect to get a good grade in this class—heck, if you expect to even pass—then you need to stop doing this!”
Kurt leaned against one of the many wooden crates that were backstage. “Doing what, babe?”
Patricia gritted her teeth. “Well, apart from calling me ‘babe’,” she muttered, “you keep showing up late—ridiculously late! Where have you been? And don’t say water polo practice, I know that the season is over.”
Kurt shrugged with a lazy smile. “There were some really great waves, and I thought, ‘oh, hey, it’s cool, it’ll be flat soon,’ but they, like, kept coming, you know? And I just had to ride them out.”
Rolling her eyes, Patricia snarled, “Your grade point average cannot handle an F, which is what you are going to get if you don’t start taking this seriously. You can kiss going to college goodbye.”
Kurt snorted, shoving his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans. “Man, will you chill out? I already got into college. And my primo choice, too—ASU!”
Patricia looked him straight in the eyes. “Okay, I cannot be the first one to explain this to you: your acceptance is contingent on your grades staying the same or improving from the time you were accepted.” She folded her arms. “If you do worse, you’re out.”
Kurt stared back at her silently, and for a minute Patricia actually thought he was taking what she’d said seriously. Then he broke his gaze, turning his head with a chuckle. “Yeah, whatever, Penelope. I’m the captain of the Vista water polo team. The ASU team is hella competitive, and the coach really wants me. I took a tour and stayed overnight with a couple of the guys—the team loves me! They’re awesome. They won’t revoke my acceptance when they need me.”
Patricia took a step closer to him, unable to believe his sheer ignorance to the gravity of his situation. Did he think that the admissions board honestly cared about the water polo team?
“Um, yes, jerk. Yes, they will. This isn’t the olden days with football where your grades can be in the toilet and no one will care. If you don’t clean up your act, you can kiss Arizona State and their ‘awesome’”—she made air quotations with her fingers—“water polo team goodbye.”
Suddenly Kurt straightened, taking his hands out of his pockets and stepping closer to Patricia. She stood frozen on the spot, only able to stare quizzically into his hazel eyes as he leaned in toward her. “Well, then, you could really help me out,” he said in a low voice, taking yet another step closer. “Just say I’ve been doing a bunch of work and it’ll be all good.”
She stuck out a hand to his chest to stop him from moving any closer—a bad move on her part, since she could now feel his well-defined pecs. He was dangerously close, because when she breathed in she could tell how good he smelled, like the ocean mixed with really nice aftershave. She felt lightheaded for a moment, and could hear her heart hammering in her chest. No wonder so many girls were crazy about Kurt. He was so tall, so cut, so manly. She inhaled sharply, only making it worse.
“I’ll make it up to you.” Kurt reached out and lightly touched her arm just above the elbow. “We could do dinner or a movie… Or I could take you to my secret spot on the beach,” he told her in a husky whisper.
All at once, Patricia snapped to her senses. Taking a firm step back in her knee-high boots, she screeched, “Not gonna work, Kirk!” as she lifted a hand and smacked him away.
She had no idea what had come over her. How could any girl actually like him? He was hot and he knew it, and he thought that he could bribe her into lying and letting him get the extra credit while he never even showed up. In his mind, girls were nothing more than his tools.
Well, Patricia was just going to have to prove who was the real tool here, wasn’t she?
“I’m not one of your little fangirls, desperate for your attention,” she hissed, folding her arms across her chest. “If you keep coming late and don’t do what I ask, I’ll tell Mr. Gardner, and you will flunk. Your choice.”
“But—”
“Uh-uh, don’t wanna hear it,” Patricia said firmly, holding up a hand to silence him.
Kurt simply stared at her for a moment, his jaw slackening a little bit. Then he grumbled, “Fine, what do you want me to do?”
Patricia smiled to herself, knowing that she’d won for now.
❦
“So, he comes over an hour late to the auditions—which really ticked me off—then he mocked Grizz’s script when we stayed late to let him audition, and then he was late to rehearsal last night!” Patricia whispered to Ben the following day at the end of their French class. When they’d finished the assignment on the board, he’d casually asked her how the one-act was going, and received a play-by-play of Kurt’s shenanigans over the past week. “And then he tried to seduce me into just letting him slide.”
Ben shook his head in disgust. “Of course he did. That creep.”
They were interrupted by the bell. “Ah, c’est l’heure!” said Madame Kelley with an exaggerated sigh, earning a laugh from the class. “Au revoir!”
As Patricia rose to her feet and began packing away her books, Ben said, “He can’t keep doing this. If Mr. Gardner expects you to help him out—”
“I talked to Kurt,” Patricia informed him as they left the classroom together, “and he seemed to hear me. It’s hard to read behind that vacant expression,” she added with a sly smile.
Ben laughed, his eyes crinkling. Then his expression sobered. “I’m telling my parents.”
Patricia frowned. “You don’t have to, Ben. I don’t want your brother to be mad at you.”
But Ben shook his head, one hand tightening on the strap of his backpack. “I know he’s not been doing his work. He’s been B.S.ing his way through our tutoring sessions, trying to get me to give him the answers. He was out practically all weekend, not coming home ‘til hella late… I need to at least clue them in.”
Patricia nodded. As they walked down the crowded hallway, she smiled and said, “Well, enough of Kurt. How are you?”
Ben grinned. “Good. It’s been getting sorta crazy, so I’m glad I didn’t do t
rack this year.” Ben had been on the track and field team his sophomore and junior years. “I’ve actually got to get to a science club meeting now. Gonna do some pretty cool experiments.”
“Well, don’t burn off any eyebrows,” Patricia teased with a laugh.
“Will do. Or not do,” Ben agreed, chuckling. Lifting his hand in a wave, he turned and headed down the hallway.
Patricia waved back, staring after his tall form for a moment as he walked away.
❦
The next day, at five minutes to seven, Patricia sat in the auditorium flipping through her notes. She was flanked by Grizz and Phillip, who had shown up ten minutes early.
“Hey, guys,” Peter greeted them as he came in. Soon he was followed by Natalia and Nicole.
Patricia rose to her feet. “Okay, well that just leaves Kurt.”
“Let’s just start without him,” Grizz said, crossing her arms. “No point in waiting, since—” She paused mid-sentence as she heard two familiar voices in the hall. “What in the…?”
Patricia turned to the door, eyes widening as Ben entered with Kurt in tow. Glancing at her phone, she saw that it was exactly seven o’clock. “Wow, right on the dot! Good job, Kurt.” She stared at Ben quizzically.
Kurt snorted. “If it were up to him, we would’ve been here half an hour ago.”
Grizz lifted her eyebrows at Patricia, clearly intrigued by the situation. “So, Ben, um… what brings you here?”
“I had to drive Kurt,” Ben explained with an eye roll. “Mom and Dad took away his car keys and want me to keep an eye on him to make sure he’s doing his work.”
“Only because you ratted me out!” Kurt grumbled. “Gallant here thought that he would make me look bad in front of Mom and Dad.”
Ben whipped his head around and glared at Kurt. “Hey, Goofus, I didn’t have to make you look bad. You did it all on your own. You still haven’t been doing your homework, and Mr. White told them you were skipping out on your English tutoring sessions, too.”
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