Bad Romeo (Starcrossed #1)(10)
Author: Leisa Rayven

“You okay?” Connor asks, his hand on my back.

“Yeah. Just a little nervous.”

“Here,” he says as he moves behind me. “I’ll help you relax.”

When he massages my tense shoulder muscles, I almost groan.

Despite his talented hands, I’ve got Connor’s number. He wants to be the caring, supportive boy. Fine by me. I want to be supported. It’s win-win.

The rest of the class chats and laughs, but I only see a few faces I know. A short distance away is Zoe and the strawberry blonde I saw on the first day of auditions. I think her name is Phoebe. True to form, they’re chatting loudly and saying “Ohmigod” a lot. In the corner are Troy and Mariska, a brother and sister who seem freaky and quiet.

There’s a girl with spiky dark hair named Miranda, who I’m pretty sure hit on me at the callbacks, and a dark guy in a leather jacket called Lucas. He’s sitting next to a curly headed jokester named Jack who had everyone in stitches at the callbacks. He’s cracking Lucas up by beatboxing using Disney character voices.

As I scan the room, Holt walks in. When he sees Connor massaging my back, he rolls his eyes and takes a seat as far from me as possible.

Whatever.

I don’t get Holt. Usually I know what people expect from me within minutes of meeting them.

You want me to laugh at your jokes? Okay.

Oh, please tell me about your hopes and dreams! That’d be great!

A shoulder to cry on? No problem.

But with Holt … it’s like he wants me to not exist. That’s something I don’t know how to do.

I should be hurt by his behavior, but I’m not. It just makes him a huge, moody, good-smelling puzzle that I’m determined to figure out.

Before long, Erika sweeps into the room and everyone falls silent.

“Okay. This is Advanced Acting, otherwise known as leave-your-bullshit-at-the-door-or-I’ll-kick-your-ass class. In here, I don’t care if you’re tired or scared or hungover or high. I expect one hundred percent of your effort one hundred percent of the time. If you’re incapable of that, then don’t show up. I don’t want to deal with you.”

A few people look around nervously, including me.

“You’re all here because we saw something in you that deserved to be developed, not babied and coddled. If you think because you can say a few lines with a modicum of emotion this class is going to be easy, think again. It’s in here you’ll find exactly where your weaknesses lie. I’m going to strip you down to your bones then build you back up, layer by layer. If that sounds painful, it’s because it will be. But in the end, you will know every person in this room better than your own family. And above all, you will truly know yourself.”

She looks at me as she says this, and I have a sudden, irrational urge to run from the room and never come back.

“Right. Everyone on your feet. It’s time to get to know each other.”

She orders us into two lines.

“The rules are simple. The line nearest the windows asks their partner a question, and the partner must answer honestly. Then you switch. You’ll continue the pattern until the time runs out and you move on. The challenge here is to get to know as much about the other person as possible in the time given, and I’m not talking about name, age, and favorite color. At the end of this exercise, you should be able to tell me one interesting personal fact about everyone in this room. Your time starts now.”

I turn to the person opposite me. It’s Mariska. She has dead-straight, pitch-black hair that hangs around her face. Her eyes are just as dark. She’s looking at me expectantly.

Oh, right. I’m supposed to ask a question. It’s difficult to think of something. She’s kind of off-putting.

“Uh … what do you do for fun?”

“I cut myself. You?”

I blink for a full five seconds as I process that. “Uh … I read. Why do you cut yourself?”

“I enjoy pain. Why do you read?”

“I … well … enjoy words.”

For the next two and a half minutes we talk about books and movies, but I’m still hung up on the whole, “I hurt myself for fun,” scenario. When the time is up, I gratefully move on to the next person.

The cycle continues, and I learn lots of interesting things about my new classmates. Miranda has known she was a lesbian since she was eight and thinks I have beautiful breasts. Lucas was arrested for armed robbery when he was sixteen because he was addicted to crack, but now he’s off the hard drugs and only smokes pot. A tall, ebony-skinned girl named Aiyah emigrated to the United States with her family when she was twelve after her grandparents and two uncles were massacred in their village in Algeria. Zoe met Robert De Niro in a deli two years ago, and she’s positive he hit on her. And Connor has two older brothers in the army who think he’s a fag for wanting to act. They beat him up at every family get-together.

I feel like an idiot. A useless, vanilla-flavored waste of space.

Before today, I’d never met a lesbian. Or a drug addict. Or someone who’d lost half their family. I’d been too busy being safe and comfortable in my tiny hometown, thinking I had it tough because my parents expected a lot from me.

God, I’m pathetic.

By the time I stand in front Holt, my mind is pounding from my new-and-improved inferiority complex. I look up. He’s frowning. Maybe his head hurts, too.

“Does your head hurt?” I ask with a sigh.

“No. Does yours?”

“Yes. Why do I seem to have zero verbal filter around you?”

“I have no idea, but feel free to fix that. Are you freaking out because compared to most of these people, you feel like a spoiled whiner?”

“Uh … yes. That’s exactly how I feel, and thanks for putting it so eloquently. Is it that obvious?”

He gives me a small smile. “No. But that’s how I feel. I just hoped someone else was, too.”

For a moment, we’re united in our freakish normalcy. Our remarkable unremarkableness.

“So, no deep, dark secrets you want to share with me then?” he asks.

“No. Apart from accidentally stealing a Pooh Bear pencil sharpener when I was five, I’m completely average in every way. Haven’t you noticed?”

“No, I haven’t.” His eyes are doing that annoying intense thing again. “I did notice one remarkable thing about you.”

I cock an eyebrow. “Really? And what might that be?”