Bad Romeo (Starcrossed #1)(9)
Author: Leisa Rayven

“Woman,” she says with a sigh, “you screwed up mac and cheese. Seriously, if you fail at cooking that crap, we’re never going to survive the college experience.”

“Then thank God you’re here to teach me.” I drag her off the couch, trudge into the kitchen, and get some steak and vegetables out of the fridge.

The thing is, Ruby isn’t exactly a gourmet chef, either, so we end up with rock-hard steak, lumpy mashed potatoes, and green beans that are so limp, I could knit them into a scarf.

“I’m writing to the Cooking Channel to complain,” Ruby says as she pushes the food around on her plate. “Those bitches make cooking look easy. I’m suing them for false advertising.”

That night we make a pact to only purchase frozen meals. It’s the surest way to prevent starvation.

The next day is the first day of classes, and Ruby and I walk the short distance from our apartment to the main campus.

In the three days since we arrived, we’ve spent some time exploring our new school. The campus isn’t huge, but it’s well laid out, and the buildings are a nice mix between traditional and contemporary.

In the middle of everything is the Hub—a large, four-story building that houses the library, cafeteria, student lounge, and several large lecture theaters.

Placed around the Hub, like petals of a flower, are the various arts buildings, one for each discipline: dance, drama, music, and visual arts.

This morning Ruby and I are headed to the Hub to hear the dean’s welcome speech.

We walk into the huge lecture theater where there are about two hundred freshmen milling around. Everyone is introducing themselves and checking one another out.

I hate this.

So many new faces. New expectations to meet.

It’s overwhelming.

I can make out various cliques by the way they’re dressed. The dancers are all Lycra and layers, the musicians have a vague, retro-geek air about them, and the visual artists look like they were stealing stuff from a thrift store when a paint bomb exploded.

The really loud, obnoxious kids are the drama students.

I feel my chest tighten as I wonder if I’ll fit in here any better than I did in high school.

It’s not like I didn’t have friends in high school. I did. But I was always careful to be the Cassie I thought they expected. Happy, easy-going, nonthreatening. Smart but not intimidating. Pretty but not desired. The one who acted as the go-between when someone liked a boy, but never the one the boy liked.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. This is a new school, new people, new rules. Maybe someone here will see beyond my many fake faces.

“Come on,” Ruby says. “Let’s get seats so we don’t have to talk to any of these fuckers.”

In that moment, I love her.

We walk to the middle of the auditorium and take our seats. A few minutes later, I see a familiar face heading over to us.

“Hey, Cassie.”

“Connor! Hi.”

I’d met Connor at the callbacks. We’d been paired up for some scene work, and even though we didn’t have the same crazy intensity I’d shared with Holt, we still had decent chemistry. He’s also very cute and, as far as I can tell, straight, which is a rarity among theater boys.

He motions to the seat next to me. “May I?”

“Sure.” I introduce Ruby, who already looks bored.

Connor folds himself into the chair beside me, and I give him a smile. Sandy-colored hair, brown eyes, open face I’ve yet to see frown. Definitely cute.

“I’m so glad you got in,” he says. “At least I’ll know one person in the class.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen anyone else I know yet.”

“I saw a couple of familiar faces.” He looks around. “But I’m bad with names. I saw that blond girl who talks a lot…”

“Zoe?”

“Yeah. And the tall guy with the cool hair.”

“Holt?”

“Yeah. He’s right over there.”

He points to the far side of the auditorium where I see Holt’s lanky frame slouched in a seat. He has his feet up on the chair in front of him and his head in the same book he was reading at the auditions. He must really love The Outsiders.

I get a strange tingling in my stomach when I look at him. I’m happy he made it. Getting into this place meant a lot to him, and apart from his obvious personality disorders, he’s really talented.

“He seems like a loner,” Connor says. I don’t miss that his arm is lying across the back of my chair. “But man, he can act. I saw him do Mercutio last year at the Tribeca Shakespeare Festival. He was amazing.”

“I’m sure.” I get a crystal-clear image of Holt as a modern-day Mercutio. All leather and denim and dark, glowering eyes.

As I’m staring at him, he looks up and catches my gaze. The corner of his mouth lifts and one of his hands comes away from his book as if he’s actually going to smile and wave. Then he notices Connor, and within a second he’s back to his book, like he hadn’t seen me at all.

Connor raises his eyebrows. “Uh, did I just do something to piss him off? He looked like he wanted to kill me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say with a sigh. “He’s like that with everyone.”

Before long, the dean steps up to the podium and welcomes us. He gives a speech about how proud we must be to have made it into the most prestigious arts college in the country, and even though he’s probably given the same speech for years, his words make me puff up like peacock. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m achieving something for me and not for my parents. It feels good.

When the dean finishes, the lecture theater empties quickly, and we all scurry off to our first day of classes.

Ruby waves good-bye to me and Connor, and heads to her stage management class. When she’s gone, Connor drapes his arm around my shoulders and steers me toward our first acting class. Although it feels weird that he’s so comfortable invading my personal space when we hardly know each other, it also feels nice. I’m not used to boys putting their nicely muscled arms around my shoulders, but I could get used to it.

We walk into a large, empty room with bare brick walls and a rough carpet. Following the example of those already there, we dump our bags at the perimeter of the room and sit on the floor.

I look around at the rest of our class. So many new people to meet and please. My pathetic need to make them like me flares to life, and a sick sweat breaks out on my forehead.