Juliet Immortal

into the wings, determined to ignore him.
    He’s been relentless today, bent on winning confidences I refuse to give, shadowing my every move, forcing me to skip my lunch date with Gemma in the name of keeping him away from our soul mates. I apologized to her afterward, but wehaven’t had time to talk. We don’t have class together in the afternoon, and texting isn’t allowed on campus.
    Hopefully I’ll have the chance to smooth things over after practice.
    The rehearsal music blares to life. Wrinkling my nose against the musty smell lingering in the wings, I gather my paints and set to work. The SHS theater smells like every other building I’ve had the misfortune to enter today—moldy and damp. White plastic buckets litter the backstage area, rapidly filling with yellowed water. I have to stop to empty them barely twenty minutes after I’ve started, tossing the water out the backstage door into the sodden grass. It’s the wettest spring on record in central California. Fields of grapevines suffer in standing water, mudslides ooze down the hills, and roofs fail at an alarming rate.
    “What the hell, Hannah?”
    Tempers fail even faster.
    “This is so stupid.” Gemma’s outraged voice carries to where I’m set up stage right, finishing Ariel’s work on a series of flats meant to resemble a New York City street. I’m trying to enjoy it, but even painting can’t offer comfort on a day like this. “Just let me have an eight count in the front row, and don’t BS me about being too tall. I’m only five nine.”
    It’s the hundredth fight I’ve overheard today. People at this school are chronically miserable and angry. But who am I to judge? I’ve certainly experienced my share of both emotions since this morning—misery at learning that Ben is destined to be with a girl like Gemma, anger that I still can’t reach Nurse in any of the mirrors I’ve tried, including the bathroom mirrors at school.
    “The choreography is set,” Hannah says. The petite brunette directing the dance numbers studies at the Santa Barbara School of Ballet and is a passionate member of the I Hate Gemma club. Most people seem to be. Ariel is an uncertain quantity the other kids avoid; Gemma is a spoiled princess they want to rip from her throne. “We’ve only got three days until the show opens, we’re not going to—”
    “But there’s no reason I should be in the back during the entire dance number,” Gemma says. “I’m
Bernardo.
”
    “Bernadette,” Hannah corrects. Several girls are playing boys’ parts. There aren’t enough boys in the drama club to fill them all. It’s quite a change from Shakespeare’s time, when men played all the roles—male and female—and I can tell it amuses Romeo.
    He laughs again, a high-pitched
hee hee hee
that makes my next stroke hit the canvas at the wrong angle. What the hell does he have to be so happy about? And why is he wasting time with me when he should be hard at work ruining Ben and Gemma’s love?
    Maybe he was telling the truth this morning and really does know a way out. Or maybe this is just a new way to ruin my afterlife, to trick me into doing something the Ambassadors can’t forgive, something that will end what small semblance of existence I have left.
    “Please, Mike.” Gemma’s voice rises, appealing to the student teacher helping with the drama club for the semester. Mike, a senior from Cal Poly, stands in the shadows on the other side of the stage. With his shaved head and multiple piercings, he looks more like a student than a teacher, but he’s trying his best to offer guidance while Mr. Stark, the official sponsor, is busy.
    “I think Gemma’s right, Hannah,” he says. “Why don’t you give her a chance in the front?”
    “But Miiiiikkke,” Hannah whines, stretching his name into half a dozen syllables. “She’s too tall.”
    “I am not. And I’m going to get stabbed to death in like two scenes. Can’t I—”
    “You girls work it out,” Mr. Stark urges from the auditorium, where he’s grading papers, clearly happy to let Hannah and Mike do the directing.
    “You need to stay in the back,” Hannah insists. “If you don’t like it, you can quit. You’re already going to miss the Saturday night performance, so—”
    “That’s
one
show out of six,” Gemma protests. “And you said you’d fill in for me, tool.”
    “Maybe I’ve changed my mind, Sasquatch. I don’t think it’s fair for you to play a lead role when