IN THE DEEP RECESSES OF PUBLIC SCHOOL

WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY, LAST BELL

The rest of the school day went on as if nothing happened. The new history teacher came in and true to her word, gave us a history quiz which purely by luck was on a very lycan related topic - the great war, another inter-species commonality. It's like I was picking out more and more of the subtle things Lycans, Humans, and Vampires had in common - the great war, and the word F***.

Anyway, after that was a computing class at the computer lab with sounded exciting when I first learned about it, but turned out to be absolutely boring. We faced the computer and just mindlessly completed the tasks the program instructed us to do. This term, we were focusing on typing. So we were learning the ABCs, or rather the QWERTY. I've been typing "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." more times than I could count. It was like the typing program's motto in life and was constantly repeated.

And then the final bell went off. I grabbed my stuff to head down to the theatre club's black box. I didn't wait for Henry or the others, mostly because I didn't want to hear Henry scold me about the earlier incident with the three vampires at lunchtime. I'm not sure exactly what Henry might fault me on - jumping on the three vamps, talking to them, or running off when they came up supposingly to rescue me.

"Sam! Wait up!" Henry called.

"Sam!" Marcus called.

But I didn't wait.

How did Henry get involved? I mean I was in the senior section of the school so Matt and Jules showing up was a matter of time. Any of the wolves in the senior year could have mindlinked Matt since they were probably from his pack. But they had shown up with Henry and Marcus - so did that mean, they asked Henry and Marcus for help?

Why did they ask an Alpha to help? I imagined they would if the situation was bad. I didn't think it was that bad. If anything, their arrival made it worse.

But of course all of it wouldn't have happened if I didn't bump into those three, and I was positive that Henry would have a lot to say to me.

Henry was going to be like, "Sam, you're a girl! What the hell!" And I don't know what else, but I was sure he would have a lot to say.

This was the first time I walked from the computer lab to the black box. It was a little bit away. I followed my lucky sense of direction, and found the black box, as well as Ki, Mr Devon, and a dignified looking lady with dark auburn hair.

Mr Devon was fawning over her, hand clasped together. Wow.

Some of the other students were just coming in too. I entered quickly with them. But not quickly enough.

"Sam!" Henry grabbed me really roughly by my backpack. He pretty much lifted me off the ground. His alpha wolf was on the surface.

Damn he was mad. Probably from chasing me here.

"I told you to wait up!" He shook me a bit.

I let myself hang limp by instinct, the way a pup would when being picked up by the scruff.

"Oh boy." Marcus, Liam, and Jasmine entered the black box just in time to see it.

"Sam!" Jasmine looked concerned, but what could she do against Henry?

I straightened up and managed to touch my feet on the ground. Henry set me down, "What the hell, Sam. I want to literally shake some sense into you."

I laughed in his face.

Henry growled, but whatever he was going to say was interuppted by a smiling Ki, "Beg your pardon, young Alphas, but may I introduce to your our multi-talented and beautiful Madam Silvia?"

Madam Silvia laughed into the back of her hand, "Oh Ki! How you flatter me!"

"Is it working?" Ki smiled.

Omo was Ki flirting?

Madam Silvia giggled again, "Maybe."

"Good." Ki beamed, "Then you'll allow me the pleasure of taking you out for dinner after this, Madam?"

"Oh, very well, if you insist." Madam Silvia graciously obliged.

"Then I insist." Ki assured her smoothly.

So this was how fancy old people flirted.

Not to be left out of the spotlight, Mr Devon gushed, "Madam Silvia has taken time out of her busy schedule to coach us, this is a golden opportunity for you kids."

"I am quite excited to be here. When I read the script, I knew at once that I had to be onboard." Madam Silvia answered.

"The script?" Mr Devon looked confused.

"It was daring, very raw, a little risque." Madam Silvia said.

"This is Jasmine. She wrote it." I pushed Jasmine forward.

Jasmine forced a smile but she looked like she was going to freeze up and fall over.

"Jasmine. Hmmm..." Madam Silvia studied her carefully, "I wonder, if I might suggest a few tweaks to the script."

Jasmine nodded her head, bobbing it up and down.

"Wonderful." Madam Silvia decided.

Mr Devon frowned, but said nothing.

The black box was filling up, students had come in and took seats in the audience. Mr Devon decided that everyone must be here by now and took to the stage to talk at length about how we were honoured to have Madam Silvia grace our humble black box.

Madam Silvia was quite notable in the theatre circles. She directed several plays that opened at King's Theatre, some running countless shows to this day, and was a mentor to such illustrious protégés that while most people of the theatre lists their parts in their acting career, Madam Silvia's list of students ran like the red carpet of who's who of the theatre world.

So naturally, Mr Devon was desperately happy to have her join us. Although this had started simply as first year project to introduce the world of theatre to us, Mr Devon simply had to also invite the theatre club members of our school to join us so we can all bask in the guidance of a true star.

So without further ado, Mr Devon invited Madam Silvia up onto the stage.

Madam Silvia approached the mic amid polite applause with a smiling bow, "Thank you. You're too kind."

She spoke a bit about her excitement about coming down to the depths of the dark hallways of public school. The script while unpolished was raw with unbridled and uncensored candour. She had however, taken the liberty of making a few edits to bring out the plethora of issues faced by youths in the modern world.

Furthermore, she could not refuse Beta Ki. She was only too delighted to receive his call and remembered fondly when she first met Beta Ki when he was still a student at the Lorent Academy. It was always a pleasure for her as a teacher and mentor to watch her students to go on in their lives to become astoundingly successful persons and be able to count many of them as personal friends now.

And then it was Ki's turn to introduce himself as our director. Ki would also like to introduce Peter as our stage manager. They look forward to working with us.

After the lengthy introductions and platitudes, we finally got down to not reading the script yet. Before we began, we needed to introduce ourselves and the characters we were cast as, sharing a bit about how we felt about the character.

Ki passed out the new script. It was typed out and binded with a row of black plastic rings and clear plastic covers on the front and back. Jasmine was credited as the playwright on the cover. It was all very cool and professional looking. I immediately felt like this was exactly how real theatre was like.

Jasmine... You should have seen her face when she held her copy of her script. It was frozen with happiness, bright eyed and open-mouthed Unfortunately, making her look like she was imitating Olaf the snowman, which made me grin. I was happy too.

I think maybe Jasmine found her calling. One day, I hope I find something like that too.

Just to get cosier, Madam Silvia requested for all the cast to sit in a circle on the stage according our casting list on the second page of the script.

This sat me right between the great Madam Silvia herself, and Henry. Which meant that I had to go first.

Normally, going first and speaking in front of others didn't bother me. I was the alpha. I did it all my life. But this time, I had to admit, it was a little nerve wrecking because of two reasons.

Firstly, I was well aware that my theatre abilities was at best untested. This entire set up felt too professional. Plus the theatre speak was making me feel like an alien who understood the language but was struggling with the translation.

Secondly, I didn't want to mess up. Even if I was totally noob at this theatre gig, I didn't want to look dumb in front of Ki's fancy lady friend, everyone else in the circle, and the live audience of real theatre club seniors watching from front row seats.

I remembered the Lorent princess on 16th Street, and I didn't want to be looked down on again for not fitting in.

"Hi, I'm Sam. I play Bulliet." I started with my best speaking voice. I tried my best to sound like I had my act together because I didn't want to fall flat on my face in front of everyone. Smiling to feign confidence, I added, "I am modelling Bulliet after my boyfriend's ex."

There was a bit of laughter.

"Is your boyfriend, the gentleman next to you?" Madam Silvia asked.

I turned my head to look. Which was dumb, I mean, I knew Henry was there, but I just had to look. In what way did Henry look like my boyfriend?

"No way."

Henry took offense, "There has to be a nicer way for you to say that."

"How would you have said it?" I asked.

"I would say 'thankfully not'." Henry decided.

"Same same." I waved it off.

"Well, he might become your boyfriend. You know it is something of a tradition. In every Romeo and Juliet I've ever directed, the star crossed lovers often become an item off stage." Madam Silvia said with a knowing smile.

"No way!" I repeated, "I already have a boyfriend, and Henry's already got enough girlfriends. Neither of us need another one."

"Speak for yourself." Henry smirked.

I punched him, "Playboy."

He caught my punch before it landed, "Tomboy."

Madam Silvia clapped, "Oh, I like the chemistry the two of you have. It's like fire and oil."

Yeah, in chemistry it would be called combustion.

"We can work with that." Madam Silvia continued.

"I'm the fire." I told slick.

Henry chuffed a little, "Like hell, Sam."

Which pleased Madam Silvia even more. "I'll keep my eyes on these two." She told her audience in a conspiring tone, "They were meant to be."

Yeah, if you want an explosion.

But anyway, we moved on.

"Henry, was it?" Madam Silvia asked, "Please introduce yourself and your character to us."

"I'm Henry." Henry shrugged, "I see Horneo as a sick joke."

Madam Silvia nodded, "Yes, it's very intriguing how the two lead characters in this play are wrought with flaws. It feels like they could push the boundaries a little and explore the issues of teen sexuality and body image. I love works like that, that shines a spotlight on what social norms would rather have kept underwraps."

Explore what now?

And then we moved on. Every now and then Madam Silvia would drop a nuggut of golden wisdom through a comment. Overall, she seemed pleased.

Meanwhile Mr Devon was flipping through the new script frowning so deeply that I was quite sure the lines on his face was going to leave permanent scars. Hahaha. I guess this was the first time he was seeing the script, up till now, he probably thought we were doing Romeo and Juliet, the modern adaptation that actually told the story as it was.

I wondered if he had seen the part where he was supposed to show up on stage. Hahahaha.

After that, Madam Silvia taught us some vocal exercises to "warm up", which I felt very stupid doing, but she demonstrated with such dignity. I won't go into the details. Suffice to say we all looked and sounded like a circle of baboons in a crazy ritual.

This was indeed an eye opening experience to the preparation a true theaspian had to make before a performance.

All this introduction and warming up, just so we could do the first read. It was a very dedicated process.