A&A&A Boarding School
Author's Note: And we are back – fast! This is mostly due to the frenetic panic induced by oh-my-god-school-starts-tomorrow. It's to make up for the fact that after tomorrow we'll be returning to our previous status of updating once-a-month. Sorry. Life's like that.
But anyway, we'd like to say thank you for the last barrage of reviews. Hello, Mary – thank you, Zareen, for that long review.
For a long time, we've been seeing hints of the older students here and there about the chapters, hovering on the edge of the story. Now, the Seniors are on the move. Watch, juniors, and learn.
27. Longitudes and Lorenzo
The class, awash in their newfound spirit of rebellion, was in a fey mood that not even Literature reading could dampen. Elrond had started them on Act Two, and once again showed his remarkable aptitude for casting, when he had Chix Verbil read the Prince of Morocco.
"Mislike me not for my complexion…" began Chix. He was distracted by Elizabeth's sudden gasp of laughter, and both he and Elrond threw her funny looks. Elizabeth clapped a hand over her mouth and rocked back and forth in silent hysteria, nearly letting out a shriek when Chix reached "The best-regarded virgins of our clime". Will watched her with consternation, and omitted to take notes on Shakespearean racism.
Eventually they had consumed so much time in Elizabeth's hysterical rendering of Act Two Scene 1 that Elrond was forced to skip the next two scenes. After appointing Pippin as Launcelot Gobbo, they rushed through Scene 4 like a derailed steam engine and arrived at the opening of Scene 5 still panting.
"This is an important scene," began Elrond, still speaking fast from the speed residue. "Put that under father/daughter relationships in your table, please. Oh yes, we must have a Jessica. Hm." His eyebrows worked. "Let's see. Jes-si-ca. Which young lady in this class has a name ending in 'a'?"
Fingers swivelled and pointed at Anna, who looked mortified.
Elrond regarded her critically. "Anna, isn't it? Nice name. Palindromic. Stand up and read Jessica, if you please."
Anna did not please, but she could not gainsay Elrond. Trying to ignore Van Helsing's annoying smirk at her discomfort, she shifted her weight from foot to foot as Artemis and Pippin dragged on to her cue.
"Call you? What is your will?"
Anna did her best to sound monotonous, but Elrond appeared to interpret that as demure aquiescence and let it pass, to her annoyance.
The three read on. "I will not say you shall see a masque," babbled Pippin, "but if you do, then it was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o'clock i'th'morning, falling out that year on Ash Wednesday was four year in th'afternoon."
"What, are there masques?" responded Artemis, who was personally very impressed with Shylock for having been able to find any meaning at all in the above sentence. "Hear you me, Jessica: Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum……"
Pippin waited for the end of Artemis' speech denouncing street parades and added in an aside to Jessica, "There will come a Christian by – will be worth a Jewess' eye." With that, he sat down with a flourish.
"What says that fool of Hagar's offspring?" said Artemis, and added with infinite weariness, "ha?"
"His words were 'Farewell, mistress' – nothing else."
"The patch is kind enough," took up Artemis, "but a huge feeder, snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day more than the wild-cat. Drones hive not with me."
Merry slapped Pippin on the back. "That's you all right! Never done an honest day's work in your life!"
"Shut up," retorted Pippin impishly.
They turned their attention back to Anna, who was saying, "Farewell; and if my fortune be not crossed, I have a father, you a daugher, lost. Is that my last line?" she added in an aside to Carl.
Carl checked his book. "For this scene, yes. But next scene you're eloping with Lorenzo."
Van Helsing, who had been idly picking lint off his hat, was jerked into unhappy reality. "What?"
Elrond gave Anna no time for horrified response. "Gratiano, Salerio, Lorenzo, up! Proceed, Faramir!"
My character is eloping with Anna's, thought Van Helsing through a mist of horror as he stared down at his battered script. Bloody hell.
Anna stared at her cue.
(JESSICA, above, in boy's clothes)
She tried to think it through. Elrond was up at the front explaining how in Elizabethan times, the roles of women were played by boys whose voices hadn't broken yet. Let's see, thought Anna, say for example I'm playing an Elizabethan actor acting Jessica. So, I'd be playing a boy who's acting a girl who right now is disguised as a boy. I suppose this is what they call dramatic irony.
"Who are you?" she said with positive misery. "Tell me for more certainty. Albeit – I'll swear – that I do – know – your – tongue – "
Van Helsing glanced at the next line and blanched.
The class, most of which had been dozing off, came awake in the ensuing silence, and glanced inquisitively at Van Helsing and Anna. Anna had turned a startling shade of pale. Van Helsing's face was invisible, because he had put his hat back on, but it was clear that it wasn't in the best of states.
"Well?" said Elrond quizzically into the uneasy lull in recitation. "Why aren't you reading?"
Van Helsing slowly ran his finger down to his place, trying to kill time. With as much speed as an extreme slow motion film, he muttered, "Lorenzo – and – and – and thy – "
Anna shut her eyes and looked as if she was awaiting execution.
"Faster," said Elrond, irritated, "we're running out of time here."
" – and – thy – l – "
The bell rang.
The slow-motion film jerked forward drastically in time. With a speed that was astounding, Anna and Van Helsing sat down, stuffed their textbooks into their bags, leapt out of their seats and dashed for the door. They collided into each other while they were attempting to go through it, tried futilely to go through simultaneously again, and failed. In the end Anna, being the thinner one, pushed past first and fled down the corridor outside, followed by a no less escapist Van Helsing.
Elrond stared after his renegade readers. "What was that all about?"
It was far too much for Elizabeth, who went into clean and pure hysterics. Sadly, it was infectious.
The Company of Heroines caught up with Anna, who was hiding from the world beside the coffee machine. She shook her head violently when Éowyn opened her mouth. "I don't want to talk about it, okay?"
Éowyn opened and shut her mouth. "Okay," she said finally, turned away, shoved a cup under the spout and flipped a switch. Foam rose as the coffee sloshed into the styrofoam cup, thick and black. Éowyn handed it to Anna. "Here."
Anna took it and drank deeply, ignoring the scalding temperature of the coffee. "Thanks," she said, after a long silence of drinking. "I needed that."
Eponine changed the subject by drawing their attention to a piece of paper pinned to the side of the coffee machine. It said:
MUSIC IS THE FOOD OF LOVE
JOIN THE A&A&A SYMPHONIC BAND
AUDITIONS THIS SATURDAY
"There's another one on this side," observed Holly.
They moved to the other side of the coffee machine, upon which another piece of paper had been stuck up on. It was much more floried than the other one – the background seemed to be an inky mish-mash of diamonds, feathers and purple lighting, upon which was printed in large curly letters:
DRAMA IS A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND
VISIT THE DRAMA CLUB
AUDITIONING JUNIORS TOMORROW
AESTHETICS BLOCK, J-101
(SCRIPTWRITERS not WELCOME)
"What's all this about?" wondered Éowyn aloud.
"It's that Co-curricular Activities thing Galadriel was talking about," recalled Holly. "Something about how we've all got to join a Sport or a Performing Art or a Club. It's compulsory."
"Damn," said Anna.
"Let's go for Geog," suggested Elizabeth. "I want to be early for a change."
She turned to head for the spiral staircase, but stopped, because the end of a shining rapier had suddenly whizzed into view. Admittedly, the sword did have a rubber tip, but it didn't minimise the shock.
"Avast!" cried a voice. " – and take a flyer. Thank you."
Speechless, Elizabeth looked down at the flimsy piece of paper that had been shoved into her hand, and then back up at the person waving the sword at them. He was all in black, and was wearing a black half-mask. His voice had sounded odd – on reflection, thought Elizabeth, it was probably the accent. It was strongly Spanish.
"Er," she said, "what's going on? Who are you?"
"Read the leaflet, senorita," said the mysterious masked fellow. "And might I add, contrary to popular rumour, we do not discriminate against the fairer sex in our selection of new recruits for our CCAs. Why, our own vice-chair is Elena de la Vega herself – "
Elizabeth glanced at the flyer. It said:
FENCING IS THE NEW BLACK
AUDITIONS AT F-203, SPORTS BLOCK
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE PREFERABLE
"You're a fencer?" she said.
"Who are you?" supplemented Anna.
The advertiser took a bow. "Since you ask. My name is……"
"Inigo Montoya."
The voice belonged to a red-haired girl leaning against the banister. She was wearing a prefect's badge that said Jean Grey, and had a notebook in her hand with a pen resting idly against it. "Inigo Montoya," she repeated. "I believe this is your second warning."
Inigo Montoya seemed to grow sheepish. "Er, hello, Jean. I was just, er – "
"I've already had to haul Westley out of the hall entrance," went on Jean Grey. "I confiscated his sword too. As I shall do yours."
"Wait!" began Inigo in horror, but the prefect raised a hand, and the sword ripped out of its owner's grip and zoomed, with no apparent support, through the air, landing neatly in Jean's hand. "Surely you know," went on Jean, ignoring Inigo's protests, "that carrying a weapon is illegal in school context."
"It's a piece of CCA equipment!" wailed Inigo. "It's rubber-tipped!"
"It's a weapon, and you're breaking school rules," said Jean mercilessly. "And take off the mask, that's against the rules too. You're lucky I don't give you a double booking."
"Please, Jean," entreated Inigo, "I have to have the sword for CCA Orientation. Can I have it back? I'll go away, I will, I won't wave it at people……"
"I'm taking it to Professor McGonagall," cut in Jean. "If you and Westley want your weapons back, tell the Chairperson of Fencing to go see her. With an explanation. For your information, your precious chairperson is already in a lot of trouble with the Prefectorial Board. You can tell Alejandro that if he carvesone more 'Z' in a school wall, I will personally drag him down to McGonagall myself on charges of vandalism. Good day, Inigo. Stop harassing the juniors and move along."
Dejectedly, Inigo Montoya trooped back up the stairs, casting indignant glances back at Jean as he went.
Jean Grey sighed, shut her notebook and slid it into her bag. "Didn't give you too much of a shock, did he?" she asked nonchalantly as she performed the process.
Mutely, the Company of Heroines shook their heads.
"Good." The prefect straightened up and gave them a wan smile. "I hope you haven't heard this once too often, but I happen to be Chairperson of the International Strategy Game Society. So, if any of you are interested in chess, or Scrabble, or even Twenty Squares, our auditions are at C-303, tomorrow afternoon. Do drop by. Have a nice day."
No one really liked Friday afternoons, unless it was Hermione, who was possibly the only person in class to appreciate the conjunction of Literature, Geography and History in one consecutive shot. Priam, after collecting assignments and upbraiding Grub for not doing his, went on to demonstrate how latitudes and longitudes worked on a global basis, using, to their surprise, an orange.
"I've lost the Tropic of Cancer again," complained Hector. "Aragorn, please pass the marker."
Aragorn finished marking out the Greenwich Meridien, not without difficulty, because orange peel is one of the worst surfaces to draw on, and accordingly passed the marker to his deskmate. Both of them eyed Arwen enviously. She had decided to use dressing pins to mark out the continents, and while this was an enormous waste of metal, it was definitely a lot less messy.
Hector watched Arwen sink a pin into the line depicting the Tropic of Capricorn with methodical precision, sighed and put his orange down. It rolled over and accidentally smudged the Equator.
"This is a dreadful waste of a perfectly good orange," complained Merry, drawing a longitudinal lines 60 degrees west of the Greenwich Meridien. His hand slipped, which resulted in an unnatural land deformity in the terrain of Iran. "Think of all the other things I could do with this orange. Eat it, for one."
"You just had lunch," pointed out Frodo reprovingly.
"Two hours ago," corrected Merry. "I'm starving."
Frodo shook his head reprovingly at his cousin and went on drawing the world on a citrus fruit.
Later, when the lesson was over, Mulch swallowed it whole for him.
Global oranges, however, were far preferable to Théoden and his Clear Relevant Accurate Precise history essays. He had finished marking all their essays, down to the minutely detailed comments in the margins, and because their class had such a wonderful mix of standards he had decided to go through various examples.
Hermione had scored highest. Artemis reasoned that this was because Théoden had not liked the cynical tone in his essay.
Cynical tone, eh, said an all-too-familiar voice in his head.
Oh, not you again. Go away.
I can't. It's your fault I'm here in the first place. You think I like being here?
Well, I don't.
Listen, Arty –
Don't call me Arty!
– who cares, I'm you – listen, your head is boring. You're so wrapped up in your own little world, with your mind-games and your statistics, that it's so damn boring. You've never even got around to ruling the world.
Oh, give me time, I'm working on it. Now, if you please, I have a History lesson to attend……
Artemis ignored the indignant ranting of the Voice and tried to take notes on How To Improve Your Essay Writing So It Reads Like Miss Granger's. Later he decided it wasn't worth taking notes on that and concentrated on shutting the Voice out.
Later, when Théoden moved on to going through his essay on the screen, he simply tuned out and meditated, despite the Voice humming annoying Europop songs, most of which he wasn't even aware existed, in the background.
For the rest of the class, Conceptual Essays were simply quite boring. So was the part where Théoden gave them a lot of wars and dates to memorise, and hinted menacingly at a pop quiz next week. The only part that was remotely entertaining was when their professor rebuked Achilles for his deplorably vulgar and irrelevant essay, and Achilles offered to read it out. He got as far as halfway down the page before Théoden snapped and gave him detention. The class applauded Achilles as they made their way down to the Dining Hall from History, still very into their rebel-without-a-cause mentality.
Compared to yesterday, this afternoon's scriptless run was a success. The lighting worked, the curtain worked, the stagehands didn't trip, the chandelier moved as if it was greased (it probably was), the ballerinas danced as if they had had training from the age of six, Christine and Raoul performed a stunning duet, and the Phantom was pitch-perfect.
As the cast rose from their (carefully rehearsed in their free time) curtain call, Galadriel placed her slender white hands together and clapped. It echoed in the empty space of the theatre, so that it sounded like an audience of ghosts was clapping ethereally with her.
"Very good," she said. "Much better. I can see we're all putting in effort today. You may have a fifteen-minute break, after which we will try a full-dress rehearsal, with make-up for the principal cast."
The principal cast, torn between delight at their director's commendation and apprehension at the idea of stage make-up, wandered offstage in search of refreshments. Achilles watched Andromache and Briseis walk with Hector in the direction of the water cooler. After some time, Briseis broke off and circled back to the stage area. Seeing Achilles sitting by himself on the apron and swinging his legs, she went over and scrambled up onto the apron beside him.
"Andromache and Hector really get along very well," she told him. She sounded slightly disconsolate.
"I always knew she'd find a kindred spirit some day," said Achilles blithely.
Briseis sighed.
After fifteen minutes, the cast gathered in trepidation in the many dressing rooms in the extensive backstage of the theatre. There was much outcry in the various rooms, as ballerinas and masquerade dancers tried on their costumes and the cast faced off one of the worst elements in showbiz: make-up.
"…and now just look at the ceiling, there's a good lad," muttered Jack, as he traced eyeliner over Pippin's eyes. "Now, look at me – all right. Hm. Needs more outline."
"Haven't you already put on a lot?" carped Pippin, who had patiently undergone Jack's ministrations for the past seven minutes.
"More's the merrier, that's what I always say," retorted Jack, no stranger to dramatic eyeliner. "Look up again while I just dash this here bit on……aye, you're lookin' good. Here, take a look at yourself," he added, handing Pippin a mirror.
Pippin took one look at his reflection, screamed and keeled over. The mirror went careening across the room, where it crashed into the back of Arwen's leg, causing her to draw an awry line on Merry's cheek with the lip paint. Arwen looked up, cursing irritably. "Who threw that?" Then she looked down and beheld the prostrate Pippin with his drastic countenance, and screamed as well.
Galadriel rushed in from next door, where she had been convincing Holly that no, there was really nothing immodest about sleeveless leotards, and stared in consternation at the chaotic dressing room. It took her some time to sort things out. After ordering Merry and Will to take Pippin to get his face cleaned up, she turned upon the culprit, who was grinning guiltily.
"New backstage rule," announced Galadriel. "Jack Sparrow is not to be allowed anywhere near the eyeshadow, mascara, or eyeliner. I will do his make-up personally."
Apart from the incident in the dressing-room, the first full-dress rehearsal went without a hitch. Galadriel let them off a very satisfied director, and a very relieved cast and crew prepared to pack up for the day.
"Oh," said Galadriel suddenly. "I must inform you about tomorrow. As I told you on Tuesday, there will be no rehearsal for this Saturday, which is tomorrow."
Most of the cast and crew felt like cheering, except that they feared what Galadriel might interpret that as, so they contrived instead to look saddened.
"This," went on Galadriel, "is because of your Co-Curricular Activities Orientation, which takes place tomorrow afternoon – I'm sure you've all seen the marketing efforts by your very dedicated seniors – and basically, you are all required to join either a Sport, a Performing Arts group or one of the Clubs and Societies. It's compulsory. It helps to enrich your after-school life, so we encourage you to join more than one. Do remember to turn up and audition for whichever CCA you want to join, places are limited."
"Oh, yes," she added, "I did tell you about the masquerade ball, didn't I?"
"She did?" whispered Anna, astonished.
"Yes, she did," Arwen whispered back. "Tuesday afternoon, our first rehearsal. Weren't you listening?"
Anna didn't think she had been. Tuesday afternoon seemed such a long way away.
She thought harder, and remembered the state that she (and Draco Malfoy) had been on the afternoon of the first rehearsal, and flinched inwardly. No surprises that she couldn't remember, then.
"It's always our tradition to hold a dance for our first-years," explained Galadriel, "and since this year your first orientation production is the Phantom of the Opera, we thought – why not do a masquerade-ball theme?"
"So, do keep to the dress-code," concluded Galadriel. "I hope to see all of you at both CCA Orientation and the masquerade ball."
In reaction to this news, the class was divided. Half of them – presumably the half who spoke to Arwen on a daily basis – seemed to already be aware of this. The other half – presumably the ones with bad listening skills or a poor memory – were quite shocked.
"Where're we going to find costumes on such short notice?" Éowyn asked Holly in an undertone. The latter shrugged.
"Short notice?" inquired Galadriel pleasantly. "I thought I told you on Tuesday. Young people are so forgetful nowadays. But since you ask, you have tomorrow morning free. You also have the privilege to leave the school on weekends and visit the surrounding town areas. I suggest you use both wisely. Well, have fun preparing. Farewell, my dears."
She swept from the theatre as only the Lady Galadriel could sweep. The class followed in dribs and drabs, wandering off to finish what business they had before dinner.
The Company of Heroines, who when it came to reaction to the news fell into the latter category of bad listeners, hurried down to the Dining Hall. "Masquerade ball?" exploded Holly once they were out of the theatre. "This…this means dresses. Oh, d'Arvit……"
End of ChapterNext chapter coming…Malls and Mental Instability