Grace slumped as she watched two boys hamming it up on the stage; they were ruining the chances of the others. She realised yet again what a huge task she had taken on.
The role of Director had been the very first one handed out, and Grace was extremely flattered that the majority of Year Six had picked her for the position. She was trying very hard to do a good job but it was difficult when half the people auditioning were clearly just there to fool about. She had to keep reminding herself that the play was supposed to be fun and she shouldn’t take it too seriously.
Casting the main roles was a priority so that the actors would have plenty of time to learn their lines. It was already mid-February and the play was due to be performed on the last day of school in July. Everyone who was interested in a role had put their name down and was given a section of the script to read.
Gabriel Brenner was an obvious choice for Dracula. He was by far the most experienced, as he had been doing private acting lessons for years, and his haughty arrogant good looks absolutely sealed the deal. He was tall and lean and his face was all carved cheekbones with a firm pointed jaw. The only issue was his white-blond hair, but a wig could be found to give him black hair.
Mina was harder to cast; it seemed loads of girls liked the idea of taking the lead role, but balked at the rehearsal schedule, which would eat into most of their free time. In the end the part went to a girl called Beatrice Greene, who did a very good reading opposite Gabriel. As she was naturally quite shy she did justice to the prim personality of Mina, but she was a large girl and Grace and the other casting team exchanged looks, wondering if she would look right in the fitted Victorian costumes. They had a meeting after her reading and Grace voiced what she knew the others were thinking.
“OK, let’s be honest about this. Beatrice is the only girl to read for Mina who was remotely good, right?” There was a series of reluctant nods and she continued “But she looks wrong for the part.”
Owen was more brutal. “Mina is supposed to be beautiful. Beatrice is fat and ugly! She can’t possibly play the part. She looks ridiculous next to Gabriel.”
“I agree,” Grace said placidly “but Gabriel acted everyone else right off the stage. Beatrice was the only one who remotely matched up to him in talent. We don’t want this to be a one-man show. I’m sure the make-up team will do wonders, and the clothes can be gotten in any size.”
There were five of them in the casting group and Grace was concerned that if it came to a vote the others wouldn’t give Beatrice a fair chance.
“She’ll need tons of foundation on those spots and an extra large corset!” Pam McBride, Owen’s Assistant Producer, said nastily.
“Good idea, Pam.” Grace said cheerfully. “So we’re agreed that with plenty of make-up and a tight corset Beatrice can do it?”
She began to smile as the others murmured their assent. She moved quickly onto the other roles before the discussion could continue on Beatrice.
“Now what about the part of Mina’s best friend Lucy?” Grace personally thought that the best candidate had been Sophie, but as Sophie was one of her best friends she didn’t feel she could put the suggestion forward herself.
“I think Sophie should play Lucy,” Owen said, and Grace decided that perhaps he wasn’t as putrid as she had previously thought.
“She’s certainly slutty enough for the part,” Pam said maliciously. Grace narrowed her eyes on Pam but remained silent.
“If you mean that she’s pretty, with a good body, and the audience could believe that she has three men in love with her, then yes, she’s right for the part,” Owen said crushingly to Pam. Grace warmed to him even more.
“So are we all in agreement about Sophie?” Grace said. Everyone nodded except Pam, who crossed her arms and looked out of the window. Grace tried not to smile. The majority vote was cast and she put Sophie’s name down to play Lucy Westenra.
After what seemed like hours of auditioning and deliberation the other major characters were cast. All the other people who had signed up to act would be given minor or non-speaking roles and be part of the crowd scenes.
Grace yawned and stretched. She would post a list of names in the main hall in the morning, but first she’d have the pleasure of being able to tell her friends that they had been successful.
Sophie screamed and jumped up and down. Then she alarmed Grace by saying how much fun they would have. Next Grace sought out Alex. She liked Alex a lot and was thrilled to be able to tell him that he had gotten the role of Jonathan Harker. It was a major part and she had been surprised that Alex had auditioned. He was generally quite reserved and she wouldn’t have thought he had any desire to be on stage. But he had impressed them with his reading. He had learnt the lines given and had not needed to hold a script on stage, and he didn’t overact.
Grace found him in the library.
“Oh. Are you sure?” he asked when she told him he had the part. Grace smiled and nodded.
“You were good, Alex.” She didn’t mention that there had been an awful lot of debate over the choice between him and two others.
He pushed his glasses up on his nose and blushed. Grace remembered how she used to have a serious crush on him a few years ago. He was definitely good-looking in a non-obvious way. Quite similar looking to his older brother Jack, who was without doubt handsome. Jack was sporty and broad-shouldered with a square jaw, whereas Alex was kind of a science nerd. If Jack was Superman, Alex was the Clark Kent version. She’d always liked Alex better. He was genuinely nice. Grace had totally gone off Jack since he had slept with Sophie and then not called her for six months. Guys who messed around your best friend were lower than pond scum.
“Who is playing Mina?” Alex asked.
“Beatrice Greene.” Grace waited for his reaction. His eyebrows raised but he only said “Oh, OK.”
Grace had intended to go straight up to their dormitory and start typing up the cast list next but she found her feet were making their way over to East Tower instead. She wasn’t good friends with Beatrice but she was curious about her now.
She climbed the stairs to the East Tower Common Room and stuck her head in.
“Is Beatrice around?” she asked the two younger girls she found inside.
“She’s in her dorm. First on the left.” One of the girls jerked her head towards a set of stairs. So Grace went on up. Coming to a corridor on the floor above, she knocked on the first door.
“Come in,” she heard Beatrice call. She went in and found herself in a room just like her own. Beatrice was there alone, sitting at a desk by a neatly made bed.
Beatrice turned and saw it was Grace. She gave a shaky smile.
“It’s OK, I didn’t expect to get the part. You didn’t need to come and tell me yourself.”
Grace looked at Beatrice, wondering why the girl had such little confidence. She wasn’t that unattractive. Overweight maybe, but not massively. Her skin was pasty white and blotchy, but surely a bit more sunshine could improve that? The important thing, as far as Grace was concerned, was that Beatrice could actually act.
“Actually I came to tell you that you got the part. You can be Mina – if you want it?” Grace enjoyed the look of dumbstruck joy on Beatrice’s face for a moment before Beatrice suddenly began to cry. Grace rushed over and began patting her shoulder, feeling alarmed.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want.”
“Oh, I do. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Beatrice blew her nose and turned to Grace. “I won’t let you down, I’ll work really really hard.”
“I know you will.” Grace smiled. “But don’t take it too seriously, it’s just a school play.”
“It’s a lot more to me.” Beatrice sniffed into her hankie. “I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, but I’ve been dreaming about it since I came to Compass.” She dried her eyes and smiled at Grace. “What must you think of me? Sorry, slight overreaction, I’m just really pleased. Thank you for letting me know.”
G
race stood up. “No worries, I’m glad you’re pleased. It will be good to work with people who are actually committed to it rather than just seeing it as a good way to get out of lessons and waste some time.”
“I’m definitely committed. It’s just the incentive I need.” Beatrice looked very serious.
“Well, great.” Grace wondered what kind of incentive she meant but didn’t like to ask. “I’ll see you at rehearsals then.” She went back down the stairs into the East Tower Common Room.
Seated alone at the far end was Ben Everest. He was watching a movie on his laptop but looked up and smiled when he spotted her. She hadn’t intended to tell Ben herself that he too had achieved the part he tried out for, but now they were both here it seemed that she might as well.
She wished she had taken the time to stop and check herself in a mirror first, though. In nearly six years at Compass Court she had hardly spoken with Ben.
She knew she was the girl out of her group that didn’t get noticed. Ben had generally always focussed his attention on Rose when he was around them, and both Sophie and Rose had such big personalities compared to hers. She was also shorter than both of them and her looks were understated in comparison. She sometimes felt like the duckling between two swans. Not that she resented it, she didn’t try that hard to be noticed; but now she had been thrust into the limelight a little, she realised that she should have thought a bit more about her appearance before doing “Director” duties all over the school.
She surreptitiously ran her tongue over her teeth to check they were clean then wound her way between the sofas over to Ben.
Chapter Four
“I must take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me.”
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Beatrice sat quietly on her bed for a moment letting the surprise and gentle euphoria settle over her. If she had been the demonstrative type she might have done a little happy dance; instead she just sat there with a soft smile playing across her plump face.
After a few minutes she reached under her pillow and extracted her diary. She removed the electronic pen from its holder on the side and typed in the password on the front cover. The digital diary popped open and she began to write.
Dear Diary
Today is the first day of the rest of my life…
Today I won the part of Wilhelmina Murray in the Year Six production of Bram Stokers Dracula. The main female role, the lead! Yes, me.
Things like this just don’t happen to me, I pray it isn’t some sick joke but I don’t think so. Grace Porter came and told me herself and she’s not the type to tease. She is the director of the play and I think she will do it really well. I confess though, to being very nervous about the idea of acting so many scenes with Gabriel Brenner, who will be playing Dracula. I can’t imagine him kissing me, but I suppose he will have to! He is a very emotionally distant person. But I have no doubt he will embrace his character. Like me, he is possibly the only other person here who takes acting seriously and would like to pursue it as a career. Unlike me he has made no secret of his ambitions.
I desperately want to do well at this. I cannot let my fear of being laughed at prevent me from giving it my all. When I’m on that stage I shall no longer be sad Beatrice Greene, I will be the embodiment of demure and dignified ‘Mina’, discovering once more her great and powerful love. And, dear Diary, speaking of a great love, I must tell you that Owen Lang is producing the play!
She stopped writing and her mind drifted back in time to her first meeting with Owen when she was eleven.
She had lost her parents only a few months earlier; her father had been flying her mother in their private biplane somewhere over the Pacific when it had disappeared without a trace. She had gone to live with her paternal grandmother, who was lovely but really old.
They had discussed boarding school and agreed it made sense for her to go. Compass Court wasn’t the poshest school in England, but it was only fifteen miles from her Grandmother’s house and Beatrice wanted a “normal” school. She didn’t want to go to a school where the pupils strutted around like spoilt princesses acting as if they owned the place – which for her was an actual possibility. On her sixteenth birthday she had inherited the interest on her parents’ fortune and the capital remained in trust until she turned eighteen, something that would happen this summer whether she wanted it or not. Even without the considerable bulk of the capital, Beatrice suspected she was already by far the wealthiest of any of her peers, and probably all their parents too!
The media attention on her had been limited after the death of her parents, mainly because she was only a minor at the time, but she didn’t want to encourage their interest and had deliberately kept her wealth to herself and maintained a low profile throughout her years at Compass Court.
On her first day at school she had kissed her governess goodbye and made her grandmother’s chauffeur leave her at a curve in the drive so she could arrive inconspicuously. She had dragged her heavy trunk the last hundred yards herself until a school porter had spotted her and run out to help.
Entering the front hall on the first day of term at the large imposing school, she had been completely overwhelmed by the cacophony of noise as hundreds of pupils streamed up and down stairs greeting their friends.
A small boy came and stood beside her. He had a thin but nice face.
“It’s a bit daunting, isn’t it?” he smiled at her.
Beatrice nodded, deeply grateful that someone had spoken to her.
“I have no idea where to go.” She saw lots of doors but no signs.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. I’ve been here before a few times as a visitor. My older brother is in Year Three and he promised my mum that he’d help me get settled.” The boy looked left and right, obviously trying to locate his brother. A look of relief came over his face. “There he is!” He waved his arms and raised his voice to get attention. “Daniel! Dan! Over here.”
Daniel looked like his younger brother but his face was meaner-looking, like a ferret, Beatrice thought. Her new friend was much better-looking. Daniel walked over to them. “Don’t ever show me up by yelling for me again. I’m not here to serve you, bug breath.”
“But mum said…”
“But mum said,” mimicked the horrible brother. “You’re on my turf now, you little turd, and in my world you don’t exist, got it?” Daniel’s eyes flicked to Beatrice, who was looking at him in disgust, and then back to his brother. “You go that way, okay? First door on the right. So don’t go running to mum saying I didn’t help you.” Then he stomped off.
Beatrice looked at her friend in silent sympathy. He rolled his eyes, apparently immune to the insults.
“Older brothers are the pits, aren’t they?” he said. She shrugged, not having any basis for comparison.
“I guess it’s just you and me versus the world today.” He continued, “Don’t look so worried, I’ll figure it out. How could I not with a damsel in distress to take care of?” He smiled at her and she felt all melty inside. He even picked up her hand luggage, a small rucksack that had been sitting at her feet. She wondered if he was a fan of books about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, he seemed so chivalrous.
He nodded down the corridor “We’ll try that door, shall we? Though knowing Daniel, it’s probably a girls’ toilet.” The crowd of other pupils seemed to swell around them; he reached out, took her hand and began to pull her through the throng. “I’m Owen Lang by the way.”
The noise echoed loudly all round the hall. Beatrice deliberately misquoted from It’s a Wonderful Life, her favourite film of all time, and quietly whispered, “Owen Lang, I’ll love you ’til the day I die.”
Their newfound friendship lasted nearly a year. They were allocated to different schoolhouses and had hardly any lessons together. He became friends with Jerry Doury, Gabriel Brenner and Nate Naverly, the boys he shared a room with, and the four of them became quite a tight group. She
made a few friends, but none that were close.
At first he found time to meet her in the library, to sit with her at breaks and to laugh and chat in the corridors, but gradually those times grew fewer and fewer. One Saturday she was hanging around outside the North Tower Common Room waiting for him as arranged, when Gabriel Brenner came out instead. Leaning back into the room behind him he mockingly called, “Hey Lango, your girlfriend’s here.”
“Stuff it, Brenner. Tell her I’ll be out in a minute, and be nice to her,” she had heard him reply. Beatrice turned red with embarrassment, but Gabriel had been nice to her, chatting about the weather for a few minutes. Owen had come out and apologised to her, then the two of them had gone into the local village for lunch.
A month after that the same situation had happened again, only this time it was Nate who opened the door.
“Lang! It’s the girlfriend again,” Nate had shouted.
She heard Owen curse, then say “She’s not my girlfriend, okay? Just some girl who latched on to me!” She didn’t stick around to hear anymore. He didn’t come after her. She felt as if she was alone again.
That was when she began comfort eating.
She watched sadly as the months went by and he became more and more like his brother, in both looks and personality. Where had the nice boy with the kind face gone? Where was her chivalrous Knight who cared about the feelings of others? She was sure he was still in there, he just needed someone sweet to bring him back out from behind his stroppy teenage persona. But he would never accept her looking the way she did; image had become too important to him.
Snapping her diary shut, Beatrice crawled under her bed and pulled out her tuck box. It was full of biscuits, packets of crisps and bars of chocolate. She put a post-it note that said “Help Yourself” on the largest box of biscuits and carried the whole lot down to the East Tower Common Room. She knew they wouldn’t last five minutes.
Flirting Games Trilogy Edition: Books 1 - 3 Page 16
