Falling Fast

by Sophie McKenzie

  I squeezed her arm as I sank down onto the sofa.

  Suddenly I was filled with relief that it was over. That I’d done it. And done it okay. At that moment I didn’t care about love or playing Juliet. I was just glad to be with my friends.

  ‘Hey, Grace,’ I said. ‘You were really good too. I think Darren might have to cope with you doing a play in a boys’ school after all.’

  Grace’s pale face flushed with pleasure. ‘Hey, Riv,’ she breathed. ‘D’you really think so?’

  Mr Nichols reappeared after a few minutes with a tray of plastic cups, a plate of biscuits and a couple of cartons of juice.

  As we each took a drink, he started speaking.

  ‘The standard this evening has been very high.’ He coughed. ‘I will send the full list of girls invited to take non-speaking parts to your headmistress tomorrow, but for now I would like to see the following people for second readings so that I can assign the main parts: Daisy Walker, Grace Duckworth, Emmi Bains and River Armstrong.’

  Yes. I was up for one of the female speaking parts. But which one would I get? There was Juliet, of course, plus her nurse – sort of like a nanny from when she was a child – and her and Romeo’s mothers. At least I knew I had one of them.

  One of them.

  One of them wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to be a boring mother or a sensible nurse.

  I had to be Juliet.

  Everyone was chatting again. I glanced across at Emmi. Her lips were pressed firmly together. She wanted it too. I knew she did. More than she’d let on.

  ‘Wow. I can’t believe it,’ Grace squealed, hurling herself at both of us. My plastic cup of orange juice tipped up against my jumper.

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said.

  Grace leaped backwards. ‘Oh, sorry, Riv. I’m really sorry.’ She started dabbing at the dark grey stain on my jumper with her sleeve.

  I wrenched it away. God. Now I was going to have to read with a big clumsy mess down my front.

  ‘D’you want me to show you where the bathroom is?’ James Molloy was back, smiling, his eyes flickering over to Emmi even as he spoke to me.

  I nodded a grateful ‘yes’ and slunk off after him.

  ‘I’ll see you in a minute, River,’ Grace called plaintively after us.

  ‘Great. You can prepare something else to chuck at me when I get back,’ I muttered under my breath.

  James laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said pleasantly. ‘No one’ll notice.’ He paused. ‘Though I suppose you could take off your jumper. Er . . . I mean . . .’ His face went red and he strode ahead a couple of paces.

  I rolled my eyes at his white-shirted back.

  It took several minutes to reach the girls’ bathroom. James explained, blushing furiously, that there was only one in the whole school – as there weren’t any girl pupils. Then I took a few more minutes to rinse off my jumper and check my make-up. I wasn’t wearing much. Just a bit of mascara and lipgloss. I tried not to look too closely at my face – I didn’t need my confidence knocked any further.

  We hurried back to the common room. My hands were shaking again – I didn’t want to be late on top of everything else.

  Mr Nichols, Ms Yates and the girls from my school had been joined by four boys, all standing in a row against the wall beside Mr Nichols. My heart was pounding so hard it was practically bumping against my ribs. All the boys looked up as I walked in, but I kept my eyes on the floor, then glanced over at Emmi.

  She smiled encouragingly. She looked irritatingly at ease.

  Mr Nichols ran his hand through his slick dark hair and started organising the readings. He got Grace to read Lady Capulet – Juliet’s mother – with a boy with red hair, then asked her to try the Nurse, with me as Lady Capulet.

  We didn’t read much – just a few lines at a time. Mr Nichols kept switching the boys around and asking each of us to take different female parts – I completely lost track of who had read what. All I knew was we hadn’t got to Romeo or Juliet yet.

  Then, at last, Mr Nichols called over to a tall, dark-haired boy who’d been lolling against the wall at the end of the row.

  ‘Flynn. Come and read with Emmi,’ he barked.

  The boy loped towards us. Though he didn’t look up, there was something about him that commanded the room, that made you watch him.

  He was Romeo. Had to be.

  ‘Act 2, Scene 6,’ Mr Nichols said with a flourish. ‘Right, Flynn. Start with Romeo’s line: Ah Juliet, if the measure of thy joy . . .’

  Emmi wiped her palms on her skirt.

  And Flynn, finally, looked up. He stared at the door as he spoke his first line, then he turned and looked at Emmi. His eyes wandered over her face as he spoke, then he looked away again.

  I watched him, mesmerised. He was good. Unbelievably good. Way better than everybody else. His voice was strong and clear and flexible. The lines contained lots of weird, old-fashioned references that you’d have to really think about to understand. At least, that’s what I’d had to do when I read them. But Flynn made their meaning clear just by speaking them.

  As Emmi started with her lines, I stared intently at Flynn’s face. He wasn’t obviously good-looking. That is, he didn’t have the melting brown eyes and square-jawed features of my fantasy guy.

  But there was something about him. Something that meant you couldn’t look away. The way his dark fringe flopped over his eyes. The way his nose turned up just the tiniest bit at the end. The way his mouth curved as he spoke. Above all, his face was so expressive. Just the blink of an eye or the curl of a lip and you could see his whole being flood with shock or anger. Or love.

  I felt movement next to me and turned round. James Molloy was standing beside me, his eyes firmly fixed on Emmi’s bum.

  He must have sensed me looking at him, because he suddenly shifted his gaze to me – a sheepish, guilty look on his face.

  ‘They’re good, aren’t they?’ he whispered.

  My mouth was dry. I nodded. ‘What’s his name?’ I said. ‘His first name.’

  ‘Patrick,’ James whispered. ‘He hates it, though. You have to call him Flynn or he won’t answer.’

  I turned back to Flynn.

  Emmi was still speaking.

  Flynn was staring at her. He looked bored. Like he knew she didn’t mean anything she was saying. Like he could see she wasn’t feeling it.

  Or maybe because he wished he was kissing her instead of having to listen to her speak.

  Emmi finished.

  ‘Lovely,’ crooned Mr Nichols. ‘Well done. Now, Flynn, the same again, but with River this time.’

  I blushed at hearing my name said in front of all these boys . . . in front of Flynn. No one ever heard it right the first time. I was forever being asked to spell it and while I rarely got teased like I had at primary school any more, sometimes people made a face that suggested they thought it was weird . . . or funny . . .

  I didn’t want Flynn to laugh at me too.

  Emmi stepped backwards and I took her place, my copy of the play trembling in my hands.

  Flynn was an arm’s length in front of me now. God, why was I so short? My eyes were level with his chest. I stared at it. His tie was loose, his white shirt untucked. As he read his lines, I could hear the same expressiveness I’d noticed before. But this time I could tell he was only going through the motions. Like his mind was on something else.

  Emmi, probably.

  I looked up into his face just as he said his last line:

  ‘Let rich music’s tongue unfold the imagin’d happiness . . .’

  Our eyes met. Oh my God. His gaze pierced right through me, like he was trying to see who I was. Who I really was.

  No one had ever looked at me like that.

  And his eyes were beautiful. Greeny-gold. Set the perfect distance from each other.

  ‘. . . that both receive in either by this dear encounter.’

  There was a pause. Damn. It was my turn. I had completely forgotten what the next line
was. I bent over the play in my hand, searching desperately for it.

  Flynn’s finger landed on the page in exactly the right place.

  I felt myself blush as I started reading.

  I put all the feeling I had into what I was saying. At first I was too self-conscious to look up. When I finally did, Flynn was frowning slightly.

  ‘. . . But my true love is grown to such excess . . .’

  And then I realised why he must be looking puzzled.

  My voice had shrunk to a whisper.

  In the same instant I knew why. Juliet was basically saying this incredibly intimate, powerful thing about how her love for Romeo was so huge that she couldn’t get her head round the half of it. And I was saying the lines as if it was just me and him in the room.

  I immediately raised my voice. Way too loud.

  ‘. . . I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.’

  Flynn jumped back, startled, presumably, at the sudden rise in volume.

  Everyone else in the room laughed.

  Oh God.

  After that it was hopeless. We tried another scene. I stumbled over the lines, then remembered the stain on my jumper and tried to cover it with my copy of the play.

  By the time I finished, Flynn was staring at me as if I was mad and titters of amusement were floating round the room.

  Mr Nichols got Daisy Walker to read with Flynn, then we all trooped downstairs and back onto the minibus.

  I pretended to be cheerful on the way back to school, but inside I was dying. Emmi kept saying that I’d done fine, but I knew she was just being kind.

  I’d made a complete mess of that second reading.

  Because of Flynn. Because of the way he’d looked at me with those intense green-gold eyes. Because he was a brilliant actor.

  I struggled to put it out of my mind, joining in with Emmi when she teased Grace about Darren, then teasing Emmi myself about how much James Molloy had fancied her.

  Neither of them teased me. Which meant, I knew, that I really, really had made a total idiot of myself.

  My one comfort was that Emmi clearly thought I’d screwed up because I was nervous about getting the part, not for any other reason.

  Two days later the four of us who’d been up for speaking parts got called into Ms Yates’s room. She made a big show of saying how we were representing the school and how she expected us to maintain the highest standards of behaviour whenever we attended rehearsals.

  Blah, blah, blah.

  And then she gave out the parts.

  Grace was Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother. Daisy was Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother.

  I held my breath.

  And she said it.

  Emmi was Juliet. I was the Nurse.

  The Nurse. Short. Dumpy. Nice.

  Nice.

  My heart sank.

  You can’t fall in love with nice.

  3

  Rehearsals began the following Monday.

  I got ready for school that morning very carefully, then examined myself in the long bathroom mirror.

  My grey school sweater didn’t cling snugly like Emmi’s jumpers always managed to. It bulged out unattractively over my boobs, then settled into stiff, ugly folds just below my waist.

  There was no getting away from it.

  I looked fat. Bulky at the very least.

  God, I really was the perfect choice to play Juliet’s ex-nanny or Nurse or whatever she called herself.

  I sighed and stroked mascara up my eyelashes.

  I’d spent a lot of the weekend thinking about Flynn. Wondering about him. He intrigued me – the way he’d made everyone in the room aware of him just by walking across it, the weird contrast between how bored he’d looked most of the time and then the intense interest in his green-gold eyes when he’d looked at me, like he really wanted to know who I was.

  That look, on its own, made him unlike any boy I’d ever met.

  I was determined to talk to him later. To find out about him. He must be really into the play to speak his lines as well as he did. I could imagine him sitting in his bedroom, hunched up against his pillows, reading his way through Romeo and Juliet’s love scenes. Just like I had done.

  He probably read all sorts of books. Maybe even poetry. A shiver slithered down my spine. I knew it wasn’t love I was feeling. I didn’t even really fancy him. I was just . . . well . . . interested.

  Then Emmi’s pretty, flirtatious face flashed into my head.

  Flynn wasn’t going to notice me. He wasn’t going to see past her – the fake Juliet in front of him.

  I put down my mascara and leaned against the long mirror.

  ‘OY. SWAMPY.’ Stone – my younger brother – was yelling from outside the bathroom.

  I sighed. Stone is nearly fourteen and the biggest jerk in the universe. He was full of himself for weeks after he started calling me Swampy. It’s a mickey-take on my name being River, you see. And because my hair is apparently the colour of mud and my eyes the colour of ditchwater.

  ‘HOW MUCH LONGER YOU GONNA BE IN THERE?’ Stone thumped the door.

  I reluctantly peeled myself away from the bathroom mirror. No way was I letting Stone in until I’d finished – but if I didn’t hurry up, he’d get Mum on my case. And I really didn’t want a row this morning.

  I picked up my mascara again and leaned towards the glass.

  There was nothing good about my face. My nose was too blobby, my eyes set too close together, my mouth too small.

  ‘SWAMPY. DID YOU HEAR ME?’ Stone yelled again.

  ‘Just a minute,’ I shouted.

  Stone swore loudly, then I heard him stomping off towards the stairs.

  Up until six months ago, Stone’d been quite nice. This shy, sweet kid who got on with everyone and spent most of his time collecting football stickers. It felt like he changed overnight, though I suppose it couldn’t really have happened that quickly. Now he seemed to hate everyone and everything and spent all his time locked in his bedroom listening to loud, aggressive rap.

  Mum says he’s a walking teenage cliché and that I should just ignore him.

  I moved closer to the mirror and finished applying the mascara. Stone wasn’t wrong about my hair and eyes. I had to admit it. Dull brown and dirty grey.

  Mum was waiting for me just inside the front door. She was all dressed up for work in a blue suit, her hair carefully done in a consciously messy, flicked-back style. You’d never guess she used to wear long, hippy skirts and smoke joints with Dad after Stone and I had gone to bed.

  ‘I haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘I just wanted a quick word.’

  I stared at her. Mum and I look alike. Even I can see it. We’ve got the same dark hair and grey eyes. The same heavy features. Only they suit Mum. Somehow she carries them off.

  ‘River?’ she said impatiently. ‘This is important.’

  ‘What is it?’ My mind ran over the possibilities. Maybe Mum was secretly dying of some rare disease? No. She would hardly tell me about that just as she was leaving for work. Maybe it was Stone. Maybe he’d been nagging her about us swapping bedrooms again. Mine was twice as big as his. No way was he having it.

  ‘I wanted to talk about tonight,’ Mum said, checking her watch.

  I frowned. Tonight? What was happening tonight? God, it wasn’t her birthday again, was it? We’d forgotten it last year. She’d gone mental on us. But no, Mum’s birthday was in February. And this was late September.

  ‘It’s the play you’ve got involved with,’ she said. ‘Where it is and everything.’

  I shook my head. ‘What . . .?’

  Mum sighed. ‘You know I’ve always treated you as an equal, River, so I’m not telling you what to do.’

  Right.

  ‘I’m just saying it’s in a boys’ school. As in a Catholic boys’ school where no girls are normally allowed. And you haven’t . . . well, I’m just saying, as an older woman with a bit of experience, I know what boys are like. At that age they’re mostly goin
g to be interested in getting as far as they can and . . .’

  ‘For God’s sake, Mum,’ I snapped, too shocked and embarrassed to sort out all the different things I was feeling. How dare she try and warn me off boys she didn’t even know? I thought of Flynn and the way he had looked at me. Into me. That wasn’t about sex and stuff.

  ‘Look, I just wish my mother had talked like this to me.’ Mum sighed, her cheeks reddening slightly. ‘But the truth is they’ll be after whatever they can get.’

  I stared at her, feeling my own cheeks burn, as if Mum’s blushes were now flowing into me.

  ‘Yeah, Swampy.’ Stone slouched up behind Mum, a sneer on his spotty face. ‘And most of them won’t be all that fussy about who they get it with.’

  ‘Stone, be quiet.’ Mum rolled her eyes, but I could see she wasn’t actually disagreeing with him. In fact, that was her real point, wasn’t it? That boys kept artificially away from girls most of the time were bound to be so desperate that they’d try and do it with anything that moved – even something as hideous as me.

  Tears pricked at my eyes. I didn’t want either Mum or Stone to see how upset I was.

  ‘Right,’ I snapped.

  I stomped outside, slamming the front door shut behind me.

  4

  I got more and more nervous as the day went on. By the time Emmi, Grace, Daisy and I got on the bus to go to St Cletus’s that afternoon, my stomach was twisted into a big knot.

  ‘No school minibus today, then,’ Emmi said bitterly. ‘You’d think they’d send cars for us, seeing as we’re helping them out by being in their stupid play.’

  For some reason Emmi was pretending to find the whole thing a massive drag. She said she’d even considered turning down the part of Juliet. ‘All those lines,’ she’d groaned. ‘And I didn’t fancy any of the boys we saw the other day.’

  My heart leaped at this. If Emmi didn’t intend to get her claws into Flynn, I’d have more chance to talk to him. I was trying to think how to encourage her to pull out of the play altogether, when Grace peered round at us.

  ‘There’ll be other boys, Emmi,’ she smiled. ‘Loads in the rest of the cast, then all the ones who help backstage.’