"The sweet summer to assist our love's bloom is to arrive, but spring brings the present to us. The daffodil's gift. The moon and the sun in the sky in unison – representing our love. Are we to be separated? Or are we to be united? Even the sky questions it..." William glanced faintly over his shoulder to the side of the stage where Odd, Aelita and Nicolas stood.
Aelita gave him a thumbs up to the side of the clipboard she was holding, and Odd and Nicolas ushered with nodding heads for William to continue with his lines. The audience of parents waited patiently for the scene to progress, expressions filled with awe at the dialogue of Odd and Nicolas' joint original script.
"But that is just it, is it not? Oh, Maryanne. The time is almost up and you still have yet to reveal yourself. Hear me out, sweet Maryanne. Where is it that you reside? The canals are not safe for us anymore – arrive immediately, and aid the urgency of time," he held out an arm towards the audience, acting dramatically as his character had been made to do so.
Then there was silence. William stood there with his arm outstretched, the audience beginning to look confused. Odd dropped his hands, completely baffled.
"Where is she?" he hissed to both Aelita and Nicolas to his left and right. "Why is she not coming on stage?" he looked to the audience that began to look to each other with raised eyebrows and started to panic.
William looked to the side of the stage again to glance at the three of them behind the curtains looking panicked. Aelita mouthed to him that their leading actress isn't here and that he should prolong the lines – make stuff up. His face immediately fell and he began stuttering nonsense to the audience.
"Arriving immediately – is an impossible action. The sky questions... the sky questions it all!"
"This is terrible. We need to find a substitute straight away, there's no time to look for Sissi," Odd made an almost inhuman noise into his fist. "I had faith in her! But of course she'd run away."
"Maybe something happened," Nicolas mused.
"Well if something happened, you'd know! Aren't you her best friend or something?" Odd snapped.
"No! I mean yes- but..." Nicolas began to roll up his sleeves as the two of them frowned, but immediately stopped at the sound of the audience laughing heartily.
"Sweet Maryanne could be taking a car – yet it breaks on the way – the skies – they can't do it, they can't fix engines."
"What is he doing?!" Odd almost screamed. "Aelita...! Aelita?" He found that she had escaped somewhere too. "Great. My leading actress is gone. My co-director is gone. Why don't I just leave too?"
"This is my play too, Della Robbia," Nicolas mumbled as he bit his nails.
Then Aelita rushed by the pair of them, wearing an old Parisian dress, corset and all, and ran onto stage. Odd almost stuffed his face with his own fist to prevent himself from screaming.
"Apologies, Julien. Apologies for the delay. The skies were not in my favour, it seems. The mobile's engine did indeed break. Yet you waited, my sweet Julien – you waited for me. Fate seemed to have planted the thought in you and you still waited. My dear, what is ever the matter? Your expression looks urgent," Aelita called out between breaths, attempting to sound dramatic.
William looked on, confused as she stayed in character with her chin up and arms slightly outstretched in a maiden-like manner. He glanced behind her head and found Nicolas with his hand over Odd's mouth, nodding viciously at him to continue.
"O-of course. The – the canals," he suddenly seemed to have forgotten his lines and he began clicking his fingers to try and remember.
"C-clos – ure," Aelita coughed out not so discreetly, causing some of the audience to chuckle amongst themselves.
"Closure! The canals will be meeting closure – our love will be seeing closure. The sun and the moon have been spreading apart as the days go on – I do not wish for us to be the same."
Odd scrambled under Nicolas' hold and he forced himself out.
"The play is saved, stop panicking," Nicolas hissed.
"Of course I'm panicking – I have to panic. This is a disaster, Nicolas, look!" Odd shoved the script which was open on a certain page right into his face.
Nicolas held it back so he could read it easier and his eyes widened. The rate at which he bit his nails suddenly increased by a whole lot. There was no way those two could do that scene.
"You mean... these canals..." Aelita moved around the stage, arms outstretched as she slowly spun around the area, glancing at the backdrop images of an old canal. "They will be gone?" she ended by stepping up to William, watching him earnestly.
"Indeed, Maryanne, they will."
"We won't be able to see each other!" she took a hold of both his hands, sorrow in her eyes.
"As soon as this canal is built upon, our crossing paths will be separated."
"Oh, Julien..."
"It's coming," Odd whined, Nicolas and him almost holding each other as they watched their beloved scene unfold.
"What- ... what..." Aelita looked to the ground, her brows furrowing. "I can't remember the lines," she hissed silently at William who began to panic yet again.
"Uh... what – what we can do... is," he began.
Odd and Nicolas stared at the pair, eyes widening by the second.
"Is...?" Aelita continued with a hopeful tone.
They were completely lost – they were sure the audience were even more lost than they were. William looked behind Aelita's shoulder yet again at Odd and Nicolas backstage, looking completely wrecked. He shook his head at them, signalling that he and Aelita weren't sure what to do next. They stood there, holding each other's hands in silence, William trying to work out Odd and Nicolas' constant flailing. He glanced back at Aelita's questioning look – she, too, wanting to know what the boys insisted on, but he gave her a hopeless look. There was nothing else to it.
"Sorry," he whispered, before clutching onto her hands tighter as he leaned in to kiss her.
Odd and Nicolas immediately dropped their holds on each other as they stared at the pair, completely dumbfounded. The other helpers backstage watched the disaster of a play unfold and began to do their magic. They took the large sun and moon props and moved them towards each other. The person in charge of the music began to play the ending track to end the play before it got worse. That was the end. Julien and Maryanne, uniting themselves to save their love. A different ending to Odd and Nicolas' original plan of them finding a second canal, but the crowd seemed to love it.
The parents and, reluctantly, teachers, were stood and clapping. The director of the film club was moved – he was quite a fan of mystical happenings, and a kiss that would bring the sun and moon back together into the sky was certainly a way to impress him. Aelita and William broke apart from their kiss and turned on their heels to face the stage. Hand in hand, they bowed to the audience and ran off backstage.
"Next time, find a more loyal actress. Like Aelita here," William pointed towards her to his left, feeling overwhelmed.
Odd just stared at the two, wide eyed and bewildered.
"Next time, I won't write a play ever again if this is how they will get treated," he threw his arms up and left the stage.
The three of them that remained there glanced at each other, bursting into laughter after struggling not to do so.
On his storming way out of the hall to take a breather, he found himself bumping into the one person the whole crew had been waiting for all evening. Dressed in Maryanne's signature dress and a panicked look on her face, Sissi and Odd both tried to form words to yell at to each other.
"Where were you?!"
"The clocks went forward!"
"We were waiting for so long and the play almost suffered a complete disaster!"
"I forgot to change the clocks forward this morning, I didn't know!"
"I had to witness two of my best friends making out in front of my parents and the principal; do you know how embarrassing that is?"
"It took me a good few hours to put on this stupid corset – couldn't you have found a tighter one, huh?"
"You're the one explaining everything to Delmas; I had nothing to do with this."
"Next time, choose someone else to play your stupid Marilyn-"
"-Maryanne"
"I don't care, dork!"
"You'll never become the actress that you want to be with that attitude!"
"You'll never become the film writer that you want to be with your moron self!
They continued to banter and argue until parents began to file out of the hall and stop to watch. Principal Delmas rushed in to break the two apart while the other kids who came to watch were laughing. Typical Odd and Sissi.