"Oh my God!" Katharine and Caitlin leapt to their feet at the same time and practically tackled each other in a hug, those around them chuckling or simply or simply looking on in an amused fashion.

"John and Matty, you'll be sharing the role like these two." Ms Stokes continued announcing the winners of the roles, she had said Elizabeth first for the simple fact it looked like both girls were about to cry. "Alysha, Ashley, you'll both be sharing Mary Warren as well and Lucy, Kristy, you'll both be sharing Abigail." Their teacher smiled at them all over her notes. "Caitlin, John, Ashley and Lucy, you'll all be performing every second performance, Katharine, Matty, Alysha and Kristie, you'll be performing every other night. …Which means that yes, you are the Opening Act, and this is also the night where the Year 12 students of the class shall be moderated for their group performance by Mr Sheer."

The bell that signalled the end of lunch rang, but no one moved from their seats, all wanting to know more.

"Next Monday everyone be here during lunch, we'll start the script reading. We'll run through it twice so you get more used to them, and also so the doubled characters can have a full run through each. We'll just say them on the carpet though, no acting yet." Ms Stokes was packing up her papers into a neat and orderly pile. "I suggest that you all try and get your hands on a script. Nearly everyone has to do this script in Year 12 for English, unless you're in remedial, so older brothers and sisters may have one you can borrow. The library has limited copies and the boarders get first option to hire one out for next year. The canteen is ordering in more copies though, I think there is about five left…so go and hurry. Other than that, the book stores down at Casuarina have them, so I hope to see you all with a copy of the script on Monday, if not, organise to share with someone by then as well. Five minutes into lunchtime on Monday I want us all to be well into reading aloud from the script, so no stuffing around." Their teacher rose to her feet and then raised an eyebrow as still no one went to leave their seats; all were still watching her with eager expressions.

"Now, off to class." She mock ordered as she pointed directly at the door. "And I'll see you all within minutes of the lunch bell on Monday."

"I told you you'd get it!" Gareth patted Katharine on her back with a smirk, making her hug him in thanks.

"It was close though." Katharine pointed out, linking arms with Cait as she joined, and they babbled along the way to the art block about how they were script sisters, or twins, or something to that degree since they were the same character now.

They waved Caitlin off at her art room and then Gareth and Katharine continued on, their arms still linked.

"Don't worry," he assured her as if he knew what was going through her mind. "We have to perform The Crucible a few months later again, don't we? You Year12s are being marked on this for Group Performance as well as Class, so for the group you'll both share the part, and then in the performance for the class performance, you'll have the character all to yourselves and Cait'll have to be one of the servant girls or something, won't she? If she's even needed for it at all." Gareth winked as Katharine thought this over. That was true. When it all boiled down to it she owned the character moreso than Cait did, since she would act it more and it was her Year12 project…in English she would probably have to help the rest of the class with the character…would probably have to read Elizabeths character when they worked on the individual scenes for an essay…Hmmm…

"Thanks Gareth." Katharine hugged him goodbye as they reached his art room and then continued on to hers.

"Well!" Ms Bradley demanded as she entered the room about 20 minutes after the bell had actually gone.

"I got the part." Katharine grinned, and was hug tackled by both her teacher and two of her class mates.

It was a good day.

Surprisingly, even though this was the first day of rehearsals for Katharine, this was the only excerpt from her journal, nothing about the actual script reading at all, only what had happened outside of it:

November 22nd - Well, SOMEONE wrote 'Smeagle loves Cait' on the blue table in the area behind the drama centre. Caitlin saw it and blamed me just coz it was in my handwriting! Someone could've stolen my hand and used it but no one ever thinks on my wavelength cries

So anyway, everyone in Crucible were gathered together by some lockers, since Stokes wanted sometime to think. Caitlin came to attack me for what she assumed I'd written so I ducked through them all so I'd at least be on the other side of them but Matty was there and he swung me over his shoulder. BAMB. Slams my shoulder and arm into a pole. OOWwwwwwwwwwww...and I'm still being swung around in his arms like a doll. Some husband.

"You can't be human, you barely weigh a thing!"

"Shut the hell up Matty and LET ME DOWN!"

So he swings me down from his shoulder, but I'm still clinging so I won't fall.

"...LET ME DOWNNNN!"

"Just put your feet down and you will be down!"

"...I knew that glares" lol

So now my arm hurts and it's really badly bruised ;-;

That's all that really happened for today…ciao for now! I'm off to care for my arm :

Quite surprisingly really, since one would have assumed that she would be at least a little more excited for it, but perhaps pain does that to a person.

Really though, even though she was beyond glad and happy that she'd won the part…she also wished somehow that she didn't have to share it, although she knew that was a greedy thought. She had won the part, why wasn't that enough? The fact was though, she was jealous of Caitlin and knew she'd be in her shadow for the whole performance…she was so close to having the part to herself…there was talk of Caitlin's mum encouraging her to drop out and focus on her year 11 studies instead and with a guilty thought Katharine wished hard that Cait would give in and do as her mother wanted. Then she would have no competition.

Katharine was really just too self conscious and really didn't think well about herself, especially in the acting department. She had been studying the art ever since she was five or so years old. She had been born deaf, and even though it had only turned out to be liquid clogging her ear tunnels and everything had been drained when she was three, she had always been a bit behind the other kids in the 'learning how to talk' department, and she had difficulty learning how to pronounce most of her speech, and lisped and stuttered as well, just to round it all off. So she had been enrolled into drama classes to help with her speech therapy, then grown a love for it and had remained in one class or another forever after that.

As a child the classes had been more on vocal projection and other voice techniques rather than acting, and then the years of drama in primary school had been quite lame. There were no real drama teachers there, and the plays they had done were of poor quality, mostly with scripts beside them on stage…so it wasn't until high school that Katharine had even got a real chance at learning how to act anyway, despite the years of training.

Katharine sighed and picked up her script once more, settling into her entrance scene in Act Two. It was going to be a long night.

Weeks later they were all taking turns up acting out slowly through the scenes, standing on the large square of carpet which they called their stage. The rest were spread out either on the black boxes pushed up against the back of the room or on the floor around the sides of their pretend stage, reading along with those on stage or marking in the stage directions as they were created, even though there was no doubt they all would be changed at least ten times before the final stage directions would finally be decided on.

They had only just started for the day. It was their first Saturday rehearsal and like they had been doing for years, their rehearsal had opened with an hour of theatre sports to warm them up. Today it had been the 'getting to know each other' type, since most of the cast didn't know more then four or so people by name if they were lucky, the range of years was just too many. It had been strange. They had been led through lessons where they'd sat crossed leg'd on the floor, knees pressed against whoever you were facing, and they'd had to make the other laugh without making a single noise. Katharine was hopeless at the exercise. She couldn't make anyone else laugh except one small girl, but then again no one else could make her laugh either…except for Matty, her soon to be husband, but that was a little unfair. They had been friends for the past four days, and he had blackmail on her as thick as a brick, and by reminding her of everything they'd gone through, she was instantly in stitches. Especially that time when they'd taken the fire extinguisher from one of the IT rooms and let it off in the bottom oval, and then the whole class had been kept in a month later when their teacher had finally realised. The funniest thing was though, their teacher demanded that they return it, because according to him 'It was taken this very lesson! It was there this morning!" …when it had actually been gone for weeks.

Working with Matty would be interesting to say the least. Semi-attraction was there, a little, never enough to act upon but mostly it was the fact he was interesting. Different. It was hard to tell what could happen between them after the hours upon hours of rehearsals they would have to suffer through before the production was over, and Katharine was unsure on what she even wanted to happen. Matty was a friend, or really more of an acquaintance, but if they met out at the shops or somewhere on the weekend they would hang out for a while. At concerts they would stick together if they ran into each other, and they had given each other lifts home after parties and such, yet they wouldn't exactly call each other a friend.

So it would be strange to suddenly play his husband, and Katharine hoped a certain part in Act Four would be stripped from their final cut, since she didn't know how comfortable she would be with kissing him, or really anyone, on stage in front of her whole school as well as close friends and family.

Oh the teasing which would happen…

And the thought of having to rehearse it many times a day…week after week…

Katharine shuddered, she couldn't imagine anything worse.

They separated from the activity and moved onto a game of learning each others names, bouncing off player from across the room by calling out their real name and then character name to pass the ball along, so to say, and then the tagged player would have to call on someone else. It seemed easy, to simply state someone's name and character name as they threw a bean bag juggling ball, but it was harder than it seemed since it sped up quickly and most people only knew the names of two or three people, and once you had called on someone once, you couldn't call on them again for the rest of the game.

It broke the shy silence if nothing else, by the end of the game they had all remembered maybe two or three names of once strangers, and they were all smiling or nursing pretend bruises where the bean bag had hit them in the head or stomach.

Afterwards most sat on the floor or went outside, starting to learn their lines as only a few were on stage at one time. They each had a book along with their script where they had to write their stage directions for each line, and also their thoughts and any other notes they could have on their own character. When it got to the final stages of plotting it all out, they would seriously need the book if only to remember all their stage movements, it got confusing when the old ones were still fresh in your mind, taking over where the new ones should be. Ms Stokes had brought this rule in when she came to the class.

They went home after the first full day rehearsal happily, the day had gone well and it was exciting to be ain a production again. They each held a script lovingly in their hands, a few words from here and there remaining in their memories, as well as a few names of soon to be familiar faces.

Caitlin and Katharine had plans to bake cookies for the next rehearsal and next time they would probably try to bring pillows and blankets to curl up with, since the theatre room was freezing.

The end of school neared in a blur, there were exams and final assignments handed in and yet not much attention was paid to them, not with The Crucible being much more interesting instead. They went through more script readings and started to organise a day in the holidays when they would all meet to watch the movie version, before Ms Stokes heard of their plans and banned them from seeing the movie, since it was so different from the script and wouldn't help them at all.

To be truthful the first few weeks of rehearsal were all as boring as hell. The first Act, which they had begun with (obviously) only involved someone young to play the part of Betty lying in bed, while her father agonised around her, and then before they knew it the holidays had appeared and the school year was over. Not all parts had been cast yet, Ms Stokes wanted to get a few of the new kids to play the roles of the children in the play, and so there were gaps and pauses as other people jumped up from the shadows off stage to take the place where needed.

"Learn all your lines over the break." Ms Stokes instructed them all, with a stern look in her eyes. "Every single one of them. You have over six weeks, and the only excuses I want to hear are from Gareth, Matty and John, who have the parts with the most lines. Everyone else, you have no excuse, and if I hear one, there'll be hell to pay." She paused, and reconsidered her words. "…Unless you get hit by a car or something. …Actually, no, because then you'd be in bed all day and you'd have no excuse."

"You want us to get hospitalised so we can read all day?" Anthony (who was playing Paris, the father in the first act) asked in disbelief.

"All I'm saying is, that if that happened, at least you'd learn your lines." Ms Stokes paused, "As long as you were able to return to rehearsals once they started again of course…"

"We'll learn them anyway without having to break something!" Ricky protested, the other students agreeing vocally or with a simply nod.

"Good then, prove it." Ms Stokes smiled at them and then ushered them all out of the room.

"Happy holidays!"

The holidays passed quickly, and they met for one rehearsal during the end of it, those who weren't away on holidays out of the state did anyway, and it was then when they found out the first bit of bad news.

John had dropped out of The Crucible.