by Daryl Banner
The side door empties into a small lounging area, which is entirely unoccupied. We continue to follow the light down a hallway and into what I take to be a rehearsal space, which looks like half a basketball court minus the baskets. Across the room, a pair of double doors empty into the wings of the stage.
“Wow, this is new,” she murmurs, our footsteps slapping against the hard floor as we go. “Party must be in the main auditorium.”
“Are we going to get in trouble for this?”
She answers my question with a shrug, then bursts with energy at the sight of a girlfriend, cutting across the stage to greet her and leaving me entirely on my own. The darkened wings of the stage, framed by long red curtains that hang down from the heavens, are littered with racks of unhung lights, coiled cable, and a big machine on wheels that looks like some sound system from the 90’s. Onstage, there are clusters of students chatting and laughing, only a spray of bleak white light coloring them. In the audience seating, there’s a row or two with a handful of other people kicking back and chatting. Somewhere in the aisle—though it’s hard to see with the bright light in my face—there appears to be a shirtless guy dancing, egged on by whooping friends nearby. Victoria claimed this little theatrical shindig started at eight, but from the looks of it, it started much sooner.
“You’re a new one.”
I turn toward the loose, gruff voice. Standing next to me is a short bald man with a beard and sparkling eyes. His body is stout and muscular with a belly that pulls at his green, plaid shirt. His beard, red and trimmed, sits like a rug against his pale, freckled skin.
“Hi,” I return with a smile.
“Have a beer.” He offers a second cup to me I didn’t realize he was holding. I accept it, but don’t dare take a sip. “You look too old to be a freshman.”
Quite the charmer. “Thanks.”
“Freddie,” he says, extending his free hand. I shake it and regret it immediately, his hand being wet as frog skin. “You’re an actress, obviously.”
He didn’t even ask for my name. “Obviously,” I agree, looking around for someone to rescue me.
“I’m directing a play in the black box. Goes up in November. You should totally audition for it.”
“Should I?” Where the hell did Victoria run off to?
“You’d be perfect for, like, all the parts. Every one. Even the dudes. You’re amazing.”
I step back and realize I’m a step from falling off the stage. Close call. That would be a lovely way to meet everyone: with broken limbs and a concussion.
“How old are you? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?” he asks, his words slurring.
“I’m an actress,” I answer. “I’m all the ages.”
Freddie laughs a little too hard at that. “Holy fuck, you’re funny, too!”
Out of the shadows, Victoria appears at my side, her eyes flashing brightly. “Dessie!”
Saved. “Hey there, Victoria! You, um … wanted to show me something?” I urge her, hoping she picks up what I’m putting down.
She’s smart as a whip and does. “Totally. Excuse us, Freddie.” She pulls me to the steps leading down to the seats while Freddie gives a sad, wordless moan of a goodbye.
“You ditched me,” I hiss at her.
“Sorry, hadn’t seen Marcella all summer. The bitch thinks she can take the role of Emily. She should go for the stage manager. We’re sorta stage sisters,” she explains, “doomed to audition for all the same parts.”
“Stage manager? That’s a tech position.”
“No, no. The acting part. The ‘Stage Manager’ role in the play Our Town. That’s the first fall production. Catch up, Dessie!” She stretches out her arms. “Erik! Other Eric! Ellis! Stanley!” She embraces each of her friends one by one, who stand in a cluster at the end of the fifth row. “This is my hall mate Dessie,” she says for a modest introduction, then adds, “She’s from New York,” in a cocky aside.
“Hi,” I murmur, then lift the cup that Freddie had given me. “Anyone like some roofied beer?”
“Have you tried it?” Victoria asks excitedly.
“I’d rather not. As I implied, it’s probably roofied, and it smells like cat pee.”
The one she just called “Other Eric”, slender and olive-skinned, gently takes the cup from my hand. “It’s homebrewed cat pee.” With a shy smile, he adds, “It’s my homebrewed cat pee.”
“Oh.” My face flushes at once. “I’m s-sorry, Other Eric. I just panicked. That bushy orange-bearded guy gave me a drink and started the whole director’s couch thing on me and I just—”
“Freddie.” Other Eric shrugs. “He’s not a bad guy. He’s just Irish.”
“I bet this auditorium is, like, nothing compared to what you’re used to in New York,” says a girl from the floor, her jet black hair choppy and erratic, and her eyes bleeding dark eyeliner like tears.
“Actually, the theaters in New York are pretty small,” I admit. This one’s surprisingly big and almost two-tiered, an aisle dividing the back six rows of the house from the front. I guess everything is bigger in Texas; they have more space to play with than cramped-up, built-on-top-of-itself New York City.
“Smaller ones are easier to fill,” notes Other Eric. “We never sell out the house.”
Victoria grips my arm suddenly. “She studied at Rigby & Claudio’s. This chick’s been places!”
“So, you’re here for the grad program?” asks the girl from the floor.
“No. I’m a sophomore. I left that school after one year. It … It wasn’t a right fit for me.” Inspired by all the attention, I let my mouth run off. “An arts school in New York really … isn’t all that. I learned nothing I didn’t already know. All the students think they know everything.” I can’t shut up. “The professors are failed actors, bitter and blaming their failures on you. Half the time, it was me schooling them.” The resentment pours out of me like soured wine. “Claudio Vergas … is a prick.” I feel shivers up my arms, just saying that one harsh word. “And Rigby? You’d be lucky to even see him once a semester. Don’t get me started on the fools who run the dance department.”
“Please,” Victoria urges me, “get started on the fools who run the dance department.” That inspires a laugh from the others.
“It’s all so pretentious!” I go on. I’ve craved this release. My parents wouldn’t listen. I need to get this out so badly. “They make you pay so much money just to fund their own shoddy off-off-off Broadway productions—and they’re never hits. They had a whole play once where the entire set was constructed from just … chairs. Chairs stacked together to form a bed, to form a wall, to form … a bigger chair.”
“That sounds kinda cool,” murmurs goth girl from the floor.
“It wasn’t,” I assure her. “Then, during a grueling five-hour rehearsal of this weird, modernized, full-of-itself, leather-daddy rendition of Romeo & Juliet last spring, I found myself realizing—”
Then, my words catch in my throat at the sight in front of me.
From backstage emerges a man whose face catches the stage light so potently, his creamy skin glows.
I hear my own breathing in my ears, nothing else.
My heart stutters.
His killer face is carved from stone, sharp and dusted with a hint of five o’clock shadow. Even from the seats, his fuck-me eyes glisten like chips of glass.
I swallow hard.
I want to tangle my fingers in his messy brown hair, which casts a shadow down his forehead.
Then, there’s his body. Damn. His magnificent, big body. I have seen countless stunning male actors, but instantly forget all of them in the presence of him.
And I’m still trying to finish my damn sentence. “And … And I found myself realizing …”
He wears his heather-grey tee like it was hand-stitched to fit his every delicious contour, from his strong broad shoulders to his thick biceps—I can already picture him lifting me with just one arm.
“And …” I’m stil
l trying to make words. “And I found myself …”
His jeans, light blue and torn at the knees, hang low on his hips, the sight of which guts me and sends me down a path of naughty thoughts.
“And …”
“Go on,” Victoria encourages me.
He’s standing now at the table with the beer, and the firmness of his ass is a one-man show all on its own. I want to grab it or tear his pants into shreds. He’s turning me into a damn animal.
I am never like this. I’m so ashamed of myself.
“And I found myself,” I finish. Maybe that was the sentence I was looking for all along. “You know what? I think I will try that beer.”
“Drank it,” says Eric apologetically, wiggling the empty cup.
“I planned to get one that wasn’t roofied,” I joke distractedly. “I’ll … I’ll be right back.”
I turn and walk up the steps to the stage. With each footstep, my nerves grow tighter and tighter. I don’t think I can do this. Seeing him at the table with his beer, I strongly consider changing my mind. This is so insanely out of character for me, I feel like a different person with each of my slow and slower footsteps, dragging my feet through a swamp of molasses. My thighs threaten to drop me to the stage floor in an embarrassing heap of limbs.
My sister does this so easily. She approaches the hottest guys like they should be lucky to share oxygen in her vicinity.
But this is my turn. She’s not here. I am.
One step at a time.
One breath at a time.
You’re just walking into an audition, except it’s ten billion times worse, and the casting director is the hottest guy you have ever seen. Suddenly, all I can hear are my own breaths, in and out. Then come my footsteps as I cross the stage, each slap of shoe against wood rattling my brain.
I draw so close, I bump into the table. He doesn’t seem to notice, turned away slightly and seeming to be trapped in a web of dark, bothersome thoughts. A tortured artist, I decide with a smirk. He’s a man of many mysteries. That’s okay. I’m mysterious, too.
Then I inhale, and that might be the greatest mistake of all. He smells amazing. The hint of some unnamed, mannish cologne invades my senses, its spicy subtleness intoxicating me. He smells clean and oddly comforting, like the way someone else’s home might smell—safe, inviting, yet unfamiliar.
I have to speak. I have to say something to get his attention. I can’t just be the ghost girl who lurks. I draw breath to say something, anything—and then nothing comes.
He has a cup of beer in his big, strong hand. He studies it pensively. This is your moment. No one else is around. You even have the perfect excuse: you’re new and you’re meeting people. Introduce yourself.
No better gift than right now; it’s why they call it the present.
“Hi,” I offer, using my sweetest audition voice.
He doesn’t even flinch. After too long a moment, he takes a sip of his beer, then stares into it like he’s disgusted with his own reflection. God, he looks so hot when he makes that face, scowling at absolutely nothing.
I try again. “I’m Dessie.” A beer is in my hand and I don’t even remember getting it. Its contents shake because my hands do. “I—I’m a transfer here. Second year. Are you an actor? You look like an actor.”
Still nothing. He even turns his head upstage, looking off as if something far more interesting than me caught his attention. Y’know, like a fly.
That’s when I notice the seriously sexy, dark tattoo running up the base of his thick neck, making me wonder what else he’s hiding under that tight shirt.
“Listen, I’m new here, and … and I’m just trying to meet people,” I go on, feeling more desperate and dumb by the second. I set my beer back down on the table. “It would be rather nice to talk to someone who actually acknowledges when he’s being—”
Then, the asshole walks away.
I watch, completely taken aback by his rudeness. It was clear as hell who I was talking to, wasn’t it? He had every opportunity to just simply tell me he wasn’t interested in getting to know me. Except, isn’t that the point of this damn Theatre mixer thing? To … mix?
“Prick,” I mutter at his back, drawing the attention of a couple girls at the other end of the table, but not from the guy to which the word was directed. I hope they didn’t hear me.
Or maybe I do. I suddenly, immediately, wholly don’t care about anything. I’ve been used to this my whole life. Cece gets told “yes” every day. My peers at Rigby & Claudio’s got all the praise while I sat back and wondered what the hell was wrong with me. I’m the outcast, the failure, the family joke.
I’m the guppy.
I abandon the stage, departing through the wing and the rehearsal room. In a matter of seconds, the School of Theatre is behind me and I’m tramping down the dark pathways back to my dorm, alone.
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OUTLIER: REBELLION
(Sample Chapters)
Daryl Banner
OUTLIER: Rebellion (Book 1)
(A Sample of the Prologue and First Chapter)
Dystopian
Contains: M/M and M/F sexuality, violence, and adult content.
Copyright © 2013-2017 by Daryl Banner
Published by Frozenfyre Publishing
All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE
She sees everyone, and everyone disappoints.
Chewing off the last scrap of a chicken bone with the corner of her teeth, feeling not unlike a dumpster cat, the seven-or-eight-year-old girl sees everything all day and night, but no one sees her. She calls herself Kid because everyone else does, and she keeps her twenty braids of dirty hair wrapped and pinned to her scalp because no one else does. Her hair’s so dirty, she forgets what color it is. Slum-colored, she tells herself, but no one sees.
Kid has her eye on a band of boys tonight. One of them’s called Link—a scrawny one with a mop of black hair hiding his eyes—and he wears a ragged blue cloak like the rest of them. Eight in all. They round a corner, so Kid tosses the chicken leg—empty of meat anyway—and follows. Curiosity is the sole thing that carries her, as she has no idea who they are. They’ve said very little in the last hour, which is annoying. She’s heard of kids banding together to right the wrongs of the city. Maybe this is one of them, she hopes, her heart lifting at the very idea.
But of all the boys, Link makes her the most curious. He told them he has no brothers and lives alone, but she followed him from a house where two other boys in fact lived, so she already knows he’s a liar. That makes him all the more interesting. He even has a mom and dad.
I once had me a mom and dad.
Following Link and his wordless party of blue, she tracks them down three streets before a foot accidentally kicks into a trashcan … her own foot. They turn—all eight of them—and she just stands there.
They still don’t see her. They don’t see her because her Legacy of invisibility won’t let them.
“Cat,” one of the younger guys mutters, deciding. “Just a cat, keep going.”
“I don’t see no cat,” another complains, squinting.
“It’s gone now. Move on.”
After a length of annoying debate, they finally move on with Link pushed ahead of them. Kid keeps up, this time caring not to attack anymore trashcans. She hates drawing attention, even if she cannot be seen.
It isn’t too much longer before they arrive at the apparent destination: a sanctuary at the edge of the tenth ward slum. She didn’t take the boys to be the praying kind. Are they here to donate? Help the poor? May
be she could join their band, help the world smile more. There are so many terrible things out there, as living on the streets has taught her. Kid lets herself smile, having drawn close to them as they approach the door of the sanctuary.
The nearest one politely knocks. A priest with heavy eyelids answers. He observes the visitors a while before speaking. “Welcome to The Brae, boys. Have you a life to save tonight?”
“Yours,” the boy in front says, and a knife finds the priest’s throat and draws red across the length of it.
Kid’s smile is gone.
The blue cloaks drop to the ground like curtains. Beneath, the boys are dressed in chains and black tatters, and the screams from within the sanctuary are all she hears as they press inside, blades drawn, knives thrusting. The leader of the boys, a lean and youthful boy with black gunk caked around his eyes, throws the butt of his sword against another priest’s face as they push into the sanctuary. Kid follows them into the main hall where rows of benches hold startled innocents. A boy whom she presumes to be the leader’s younger brother—practically his twin, similar of face and build—shoves one of the older ladies, threatening her with a thin curved blade Kid doesn’t know the name of, and demands something from her, her jewels, her life, the sanctuary’s money keep. It’s so difficult to make out words with all the screaming.
Then an unlucky priest who speaks up gets his jaw knocked sideways, blood painting the wall behind him. “Where’s your Three Goddess now?” the attacker cries out, laughing maniacally. “Go ahead!—Pray! Pray! Ask them to save a life now! Save plenty of ‘em!”
She spots Link passing through the hall less boldly, the scared faces of innocents seeming to bring pause to his actions. Kid slouches against a wall, feeling the hope that lived only a moment ago in her heart turn black as the blood that now dances on stone and fist and sharp, sharp metal. Oh, what boys’ hands can do …
