Jade walked into her screenwriting class with a to-go coffee cup in hand and sat in one of the many empty chairs. Nobody, including the teacher, Mr. Gradstein , had shown up for 1st period, yet. The lights were still off and only a few rays of the morning sun had begun to illuminate the large, dull room. She liked to show up a little earlier than everyone else so that she could claim an additional seat as a footstool to prop her feet up onto. She opted for a seat near the back of the room and took a sip of her coffee. The hot liquid burned her tongue, but not enough to prevent her from continuing. She could feel it heating her body from the inside out, making her almost sweat. During this time of year, most people might prefer a cool, iced drink, but the comfort of a hot coffee in the morning is one of the few things that bring her true joy.
She sat there for a few moments, enjoying her solitude. There was no talking, no yelling here. She could take a few full breaths and let her mind be clear. She braced myself for change as people slowly began to file in. To let people know not to speak to her, Jade fished out her notebook and pretended to focus on a drawing. The page was covered in indistinguishable scribbles.
Mr. Gradstein came in at some point, but did not make much conversation with anyone. Once the 5 strikes of the bell commenced class he finally addressed them all.
"You kids know the drill. Get out your notebooks and follow along."
They did know the drill. Every single day, all he did was lecture as they took notes in their notebooks. Jade was almost certain he was the only teacher at Hollywood Arts that taught exclusively through PowerPoint presentations, but nobody really cared. It was absolutely mindless work to copy words down for an hour. She won't complain though - it's pretty easy… though incredibly boring.
While he stays on a slide for a long time, Jade mindlessly doodle stars in the margins. Sometimes she would catch Cat drawing hearts in her margins. Jade wondered if she started doing it after watching her doodle first. Copy Cat.
Just then, she realized that Cat wasn't here today. She darted her eyes across the room to be sure she wasn't missing her, but she definitely wasn't in the room. She don't know why, but she was worried so she sent her a text through her Pear phone.
"Where are you at?"
She was careful to not let the brightness of my screen give her away in the darkness. A few moments later, the phone buzzed on her leg.
"At the hospital, but I'm okay! My brother made me a sandwich for breakfast, but he put beads from my charm bracelet in the jelly… I can feel them in me when I do jumping jacks :)"
She let out a small sigh at her typical dopiness and simply responded with, "Never eat anything he gives you again."
"Kay kay!"
Jade returned her phone to my bag and continued with the notetaking and doodling. When screenwriting class was nearly over, Mr. Gradstein started speaking with more projection so that the students who hadn't been paying attention the entire time would look up. She broke my focus off of an inky, nautical star to listen to his closing remarks.
"Okay, there are only a few minutes left of class so everybody listen to your assignment instructions, please!" He waited for everyone to look in his direction. "In a moment, I want everyone in this room to partner up with someone else. You will be tasked to draft a 5 minute play that follows the 3 C's we covered today."
If she was being honest with herself, she had already forgotten what the 3 C's were. Glancing back at her sprawled pages, she saw the words clear, concise, and creative.
"To make the assignment less broad, I also ask that you highlight food in some way in addition to following the 3 C's. You can have your characters be food, a conflict over food, a plot completely revolved around food, or whatever else you can think of. This should be a fun exercise - don't overthink it too much. The script is due Monday, so make sure that you either meet up with your partner sometime over the weekend or email or text each other. You may pick your partners now and begin!"
She suddenly began to panic. Cat was the only friend she had in this class and now she wasn't here. People paired up with each other quickly and Jade was running out of viable options. She felt stuck to her seat. She didn't want to make it obvious that she didn't have a partner yet. After scanning her eyes around the room one more time, she made eye contact with Ryder Daniels who also needed a partner.
Of course he's the only person left she thought. Nobody likes to work with Ryder because he has a reputation of always making his partner or group do all the hard work while he contributes nothing.
He walked over to the seat next to her and gave a beaming smile. "Looks like we're partners," he said, "I'd prefer to meet at my house to work on this assignment. I never email and I don't want to have to go anywhere. Cool?"
She wanted to give a clever retort but was intimidated by his status as a sophomore while she was only a freshman. And she could hardly refuse when he was her only choice.
"Yeah, that works," she said just before the bell rang.
He wrote his address in her still-open notebook, winked, and said, "See you tomorrow," before he left the room.
Involuntarily, her heart gave one hard beat. She felt betrayed by herself for reacting to his charm at all and immediately scowled at herself as she picked up her belongings. The last sip of coffee had gone cold and lost its grounding effect. She threw it away on my way out.
