After school, Caledon met Michelle outside her cssroom and walked with her to her club room.

  “How was your day?” she asked, more out of politeness than genuine interest.

  “It was fine. One of my cssmates got his Calculus homework eaten by his dog.”

  She ughed. “What? Is that true, or was that just his attempt to stay out of detention or something?”

  Shaking his head solemnly, Caledon said, “No, really. Apparently, he knew the teacher wouldn’t believe him, so he brought the remains of it in a pstic sandwich bag as proof. He cimed he had to tug it out of his dog’s mouth. The pages were still damp and soggy.”

  Michelle gagged. “And then? Did the teacher let him off?”

  “He looked like he was going to be sick, actually. And then he gave him before the end of the school day to hand in his homework and ordered him to discard the baggie right away.”

  “How’s he going to have enough time to redo his homework? That’s stingy.”

  “That was really generous for this teacher. He’s known for giving people a week’s worth of detention for not handing in their homework on time.”

  “Let me guess, Mr. Langley?”

  “Yeah! See, you know who he is.”

  “Everyone does.”

  They were still debating with each other which teacher was the most notorious in their grade when they arrived outside the drama club room.

  “Wait here,” she told him.

  As she opened the door, she almost got bowled over by someone trying to leave the room at the exact same time.

  “Aah!” she heard Barnaby excim, right at the moment when he crashed into her.

  His hands flew out to grab her by the shoulders, preventing her from falling to the ground. Both he and Michelle swayed on the spot as they regained their bance. Michelle felt a hand grip the back of her elbow to steady her. When she looked to see who it was, Caledon was staring at them in mild concern.

  “Thanks,” she muttered to him.

  “Sorry, sorry!” Barnaby yelped. “Are you okay?!”

  “Dude, can’t you just walk normally?” she compined, pulling away from him once she had recovered her bance. “Why do you always have to run out of the room?”

  “I didn’t think there was anyone behind the door! Sorry, I’ve got to go. Someone’s spotted Landon in the courtyard!”

  With that, he dashed down the hallway without giving either of them a second gnce.

  Michelle rubbed her face a little. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s not your fault. Barnaby, uh, looks like a pretty active guy.” Caledon was still staring down the hallway in the direction of where Barnaby had disappeared to.

  “Oh, he really is. He runs everywhere. He runs in the hallways so much that he actually gets detentions for it.”

  The only times Barnaby wasn’t rushing somewhere to do something were when he was on stage. And even then, he had still run off on occasion whenever someone spotted his runaway pet rooster somewhere in the school.

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  She went into the club room, greeted the other members who were present, and came back out to pass him the ticket to the py.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “What are you doing after this?”

  He cast his eyes upwards as he thought. “I’m probably just going to head home. My friends are all busy today.”

  “Hey, we’re having our rehearsal in another twenty minutes. If you have nothing better to do, you can sit in and watch to kill some time. You can leave anytime you want.”

  He thought about it for a short while and then shrugged. “Why not?”

  ———

  “Hey, who’s that guy sitting over there?”

  Nicole’s voice was quite close to her.

  Michelle frowned in irritation. Busy in her attempt to conjure a sense of despair over her imaginary child going missing, she ignored Nicole’s question. She was standing behind the stage curtains clutching her script, waiting for her turn to enter the scene.

  “Oh, that’s Michelle’s boyfriend.”

  Involuntarily, her ears caught onto Barnaby’s statement when her name was mentioned.

  “Really? Is that your boyfriend?” Nicole then asked, approaching Michelle until she was facing her and she no longer had the option of pretending nobody was addressing her.

  Apparently, both of them had been peeking from the curtains to look out at the assembly hall.

  “Yes,” she said impatiently. “He had some time to kill, so I told him he could sit in on our rehearsal.”

  She ughed. “What? I thought you’d say that he was here to show some support.”

  “Oh, he’ll come to watch the actual py too.”

  “You look a lot less enthusiastic about your new boyfriend than I thought you would be,” Nicole commented. “You seemed so excited when you were telling me about him st week.”

  “What do you mean?” Michelle flicked a confused gnce at her. “No, never mind. I need to focus on this.”

  “Let her get into character,” Barnaby advised, stepping forward and patting Michelle on the shoulder. “You can do it! Don’t worry too much.”

  She could not, in fact, do it.

  The awkward but encouraging smile that Crissa gave her throughout her pathetic attempt at sounding distraught over her character’s missing child was all the proof she needed to know that it just wasn’t working.

  “At least you’re not pying a leading role,” Nicole offered when Michelle returned to the backstage with a gloomy face.

  “Well, yeah. I’d like to think that Crissa would have the sense to never put me in a leading role even if she were desperate.” She sighed heavily. “At least I only have five lines.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Nicole slung an arm over her shoulders.

  She left the stage to talk with Crissa, who was the stage manager for this py. Once again, Crissa reassured her that she was doing great before returning her attention to the stage.

  When Michelle went up to approach her boyfriend, Caledon was leaning forward in his seat, watching the py intently. He finally tore his eyes away from the stage when she sat down beside him.

  “This is interesting,” he said. “I want to know why people are going missing.”

  “Really?” Pleased, Michelle smiled. “I bet Owen would be fttered to hear it.”

  “Owen?”

  “He’s a senior who writes most of the scripts for our original pys.” She craned her neck to scan the room, then pointed to a bck-haired guy who was seated, with his back to them, in the front row. “Look, that’s him.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Yeah, I heard he wants to be a pywright one day. He’s really great at acting, too.”

  “Wish I knew what I wanted to do.” Caledon sounded wistful.

  “You don’t?”

  “You do?”

  “I don’t really have any big career goals,” she said breezily. “I just want to earn enough money to support myself and my future dog. That’s all that matters!”

  It was ridiculous to expect herself to be so certain of what she wanted to do for her rest of her life, and Michelle refused to stress herself out over something like that. She would figure it out as she went along.

  “That’s actually … not the worst idea. I could probably do with a more rexed mindset like you.”

  “Are you worrying a lot about what you’re going to do in the future?”

  “Maybe a little,” he admitted. “I don’t feel drawn to any career field in particur, but so many people around me already know what they want to do after high school.”

  “I mean, good for them, but it’s not the end of the world that you aren’t sure yet,” she said. “There’s still time to think about it.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “I guess.”

  She lightly cpped a hand on his shoulder before rising to her feet to head for the backstage. She had another appearance to make.

  ———

  Michelle spent the rest of the week practicing her lines on her own during her spare time.

  When Saturday evening rolled around, she was more or less resigned to doing the best she could. At least she had gotten to the point of managing to ditch most of the awkwardness in her gestures and facial expressions. She comforted herself with the fact that her appearances would be short, and most people probably wouldn’t be paying much attention to her, anyway.

  The py went without a hitch, except for what Michelle thought was her still somewhat stilted acting, but everyone in her club just told her to cheer up and that she did a good job when she went backstage.

  Finally, when it ended, they received roaring appuse from the audience in the assembly hall as all the cast members gathered on the stage and bowed.

  The weight of a truckload of bricks were lifted off her as Michelle headed through the side door out of the hall with the rest of the cast members to change out of her costume. She just had to repeat this tomorrow, and then it would all be over.

  By the time she returned to the hall to get her stuff from the backstage, a rge part of the audience had already cleared out of the hall.

  There were still a quite few groups of people milling around, likely waiting for the people that they knew.

  To Michelle’s great surprise, Adelia hobbled over in her pster leg cast and crutches to greet her before she could even begin to look around for Caledon or her parents.

  Adelia first congratuted her on doing a great job, and then apologized for being the reason Michelle had to suddenly take on this role. This instantly made Michelle feel contrite for her previous huffiness about having this role thrust upon her.

  “No, seriously, I don’t think I really did a good job,” she said, shaking her head, “but thanks for being nice. Hey, get well soon, okay?”

  She gnced down at Adelia’s leg cast, and the tter winced.

  “Thanks. Sorry again. I really will be more careful next time.”

  Michelle quickly waved off her apologies. They grinned at each other before Adelia headed off in the direction of a couple of teenage girls who were waiting for her.

  “Michelle!”

  Sylvie’s distinct, clear voice rang out in the mostly empty hall. Michelle whirled around in the direction of her voice. Her friend was walking briskly towards her with her boyfriend in tow.

  Pleasantly surprised by her friend’s presence, she said, “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  Sylvie smiled widely. “I was curious about the py.”

  “She was also very curious about your role,” Jordan said.

  Michelle ughed in delight. “So you came to see me suck at being a desperate mother? Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to come watch it?”

  “Isn’t this a nice surprise? I know it was a really minor role, but you rarely make appearances in school pys anymore.” Sylvie handed her a bag of bite-sized candy bars. “You were great!”

  “Aww, thanks!” Michelle beamed, already ripping it open. “You even got me something! You’re the best.”

  “Hey, congrats. You made it through.”

  Caledon showed up beside them, startling her. He had approached them from the side, so Michelle hadn’t noticed him.

  She smiled up at him. “Thanks.”

  Then she did a double take.

  He was presenting to her a single red rose wrapped in a half-transparent packaging.

  “Is that for me?” she asked incredulously.

  She gred at Sylvie when she snorted. Jordan just looked amused.

  “Who else could it be for?” Sylvie said. “You’re the only one here who’s in the py.”

  “I’m holding it out to you, so I would say yes.” He hesitated. “Unless you don’t like flowers?”

  Michelle took it and stared at it. “No, I appreciate it. Thanks, Caledon. I just wasn’t expecting this. I mean, I wasn’t even in one of the bigger supporting roles.”

  The front of the packaging was made out of transparent pstic film, and its pink back was made out of something that felt like paper, but was a little sturdier than that. The vivid crimson of the rose petals stood out against the light pink background. She ran her fingers over the papery texture.

  “Actually, my friend gave me the suggestion.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Wow. Tell your friend that was a great suggestion.”

  He grinned. “I will.”

  Abruptly, she realized that her parents were walking towards them. Because Sylvie and Jordan had their backs to them, they couldn’t see them.

  “Do you guys want to get food?” Sylvie was saying. “We were going to get pizza after this.”

  With a questioning look in his eyes, Caledon turned to her. “If Michelle wants to.”

  “Sure,” she said, waving at her parents. “Let me just let my parents know—Mom! Dad!”

  They all turned around to see who she was waving at. Her parents had insisted on coming today to support her, although they knew that her part in the py was only a tiny one.

  She trotted over, meeting them halfway.

  Her friends followed after, albeit a slightly slower pace.

  “It was awkward, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I know it was.”

  Her mother ughed. “You haven’t even given us a chance to answer. You were great, Michelle. Don’t worry.”

  “I can’t wait for tomorrow to be over,” she groaned.

  “Tomorrow will be even better, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, I almost believed you had a child that had gone missing,” her father said, dispying some btant parental bias.

  She stared him down with the most deadpan expression she had. “No, you didn’t.”

  He backpedaled a little. “Okay, maybe not entirely, but you were still fantastic.”

  She sighed. “But thanks for coming anyway.”

  “We bought you two pints of your favorite ice-cream,” her mother offered. “They’re in the freezer at home waiting for you.”

  Squealing in joy, she lunged forward to hug them both. “Thank you!”

  “What’s this?” her mother said, her gaze locking onto the single rose in Michelle’s hand. “Someone gave you a rose! That’s sweet. Did Sylvie give it to you?”

  “No, she gave me this.” Michelle lifted the bag of candy bars to show them. “My boyfriend gave me the rose.”

  Her parents chorused in unison, gaping at her.

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Boyfriend?”