Chapter 4
The next day, everyone was hard at work in the Junior Gazette newsroom. Lynda had a pile of editing to get through but found herself thinking more and more about the kissing scene between Romeo and Juliet. What if she got in and Spike didn't? She would have to kiss some KD from school. And she couldn't drop out now. But what if, like he said, Spike got in and he got to kiss another girl? Lynda was determined to fight her way past that later, and went back to typing up the editorial. Just then, Colin Mathews entered the room and asked Lynda if he could make an announcement.
"If this is one of your promotional scams, Colin . . ." she said warningly. "Don't think I've forgotten the Quila incident."
Colin rubbed the top of his lip self-consciously. "No, no, it's inside information on the cast for the school play. I just happened to be in the school's office when Mrs McGuigan was typing out the list. And, being the kind soul I am, I offered to help her with some filing and photocopying. But I accidentally photocopied the wrong bit of paper!" He gave her that "Aren't I silly?" Colin expression. "But if you don't want to hear it, well . . ."
"Don't be an idiot, Colin. Read it out."
"Knew you'd see it my way, kid. Alright then. Folks, if I could have your attention please?" Everyone gathered around, expectantly. Colin loved to work an audience and was very adept at doing so. Finally, after much lead-up and introduction and a solid nudge from Lynda's elbow, he cut to the chase. "The Junior Gazette is being represented well in this year's school play. We have Kenny Phillips as Lord Capulet, Sarah Jackson as Juliet's nurse, yours truly as Romeo's cousin Mercutio and our very star-crossed lovers, Spike and Lynda, as Romeo and Juliet!" The newsroom cheered, clapped and whistled. Spike leapt over Lynda's desk and caught her up in a kiss.
"Spike! What the hell are you doing!" she exclaimed, blushing furiously and pushing him violently away.
"Just rehearsing, Juliet dear!" he replied, narrowly missing crashing through the windows of the meeting room. Lynda groaned and sank back down into her chair.
"What have I got myself into . . . ?"
The official cast announcement was made during school assembly the following day. When Mr Sullivan read out the two leads, there were gasps, murmurs and giggles from the assembled students. Lynda groaned. She seemed to be doing a lot of groaning these days.
"I knew it. This was a terrible idea," she hissed to Sarah who was sitting next to her.
"Come on, Lynda. Surely you're not worried about a bunch of first-formers having a giggle?" asked Sarah.
"I think I'll go and talk to Sullivan about dropping out. I mean – the paper –"
"Will be fine," interrupted Sarah. "Look, if anything, it will be good for the Junior Gazette. We've got people on the inside, we can bring blow-by-blow accounts of how it's all coming together. Great feature column. And you have to face it, Lynda, the leading man draws an audience!" She pointed over to the door of the assembly hall where a group of admiring girls had gathered around Spike, who was happily basking in the attention, sunglasses on. Lynda snorted.
"Terrific. Why don't we change the name of the paper to Spike Weekly and be done with it?"
"Well, I think it will get approval from Spike," said Kenny, joining them. "Might be a little harder to get Matt Kerr on board though!" Meanwhile, Spike had detached himself with some difficulty from his band of groupies and sauntered over to them.
"Hey, fellow Veronians," he said. "Lynda, glad you're here. I want your opinion on one of our scenes together. Well, it's a technical issue and I just wanted to know how you felt about it, where you stood, what you thought would really play out well on stage – "
"Spike, what?" snapped Lynda.
"Okay, here it is." He paused. "Tongue or no?"
Kenny snorted and Sarah fought hard to keep from smirking. Lynda, however, smiled sweetly at Spike.
"Oh, tongue. Definitely tongue," she replied.
"Really?" Spike was shocked. He had only been winding her up, of course, but a man had to take what he could get with Ms Day!
"Yes. Your tongue, staple gun, my wall." With that, Lynda flounced out of the assembly hall. Spike recovered quickly.
"You guys are all witnesses. She said tongue!"