7

The following afternoon was the first read-through of the script for the drama club.

"Where the heck is Mrs. Cahill? She's never this late! She never has meetings on Fridays, either!" Katherine said, voicing the thoughts of the whole cast.

"You know what, if she doesn't show up, or at least send someone in her place, I'm leaving," said Tobias.

Five minutes later, there was no teacher. Tobias picked up his stuff and started out of the door in the back of the auditorium. He was dragged back in by someone that looked oddly familiar. Three other people followed. Tobias then went back to his seat.

The man that dragged Tobias in spoke up.

"My name is Justin Bartha. Yes, I am that guy from National Treasure. No, not Nicolas Cage. I was Nic's sidekick," he said. "I bet you all are wondering why I'm here. Actually, I'm kinda wondering that myself. For some reason, your old drama teacher retired suddenly, so the school board asked me to step in on short notice."

The cast started talking excitedly.

"Anthony's here! Look!" Johanna said, pointing at him.

"And that's our friend, Zach Fletcher. What's he doing here? I thought he graduated two years ago!" Katherine said, pointing him out as well.

"Who's that cute guy standing with them?" Megan asked.

Toby asked, "Who's Nicolas Cage? What's National Treasure?"

"OK, everyone! Settle down!" Justin screamed over the crowd.

Everyone instantly got quiet.

"Since I was brought in on such short notice, I brought in three assistant directors to help me with your fall play. Would you three please introduce yourselves?" he continued.

Zach stepped forward first.

"Hi, I'm Zach Fletcher. Some of you may know me from the drama club a couple of years ago when I went here. If you want to talk about The Dark Knight, I'm your guy."

Anthony spoke next.

"My name is Anthony Hope. I'm new in town. I just met my co-assistant director Rudolph last night. I know almost nothing about Psycho, but he still dragged me here."

Rudolph started, "My name is Rudolph. Well…"

He paused and hesitated.

"My full name is Rudolph Norman Francis Bates."

The whole cast gasped and started whispering.

"Quiet down! Let him finish! Dang, are you guys always that talkative in school?" Justin said.

Kyle Dingle screamed from the back, "Yes! We are always this loud!"

Everyone laughed. Rudolph smiled weakly before continuing.

"Yes. It's kinda ironic, being assistant director for Psycho. My dad was Norman Bates. No, I'm not that close to him, not really. He died when I was one. I'm not really looking for a huge wave of sympathy, but if you do feel sad… that's fine, too."

There was a heavy silence before Justin said, "OK… I put the scripts out on the stage. Go get the one with your name on it, and then we'll get started on our read-through."

There was a huge scramble on the stage as everyone went to get their scripts.

"Mother! Oh, God, Mother! Blood! Blood!" Tobias screamed, reciting one of Norman's lines.

"OK, Tobias, you'll do the cleaning in Cabin 1, then we'll take the car to the swamp. When we do that, you'll push a fake car into the orchestra pit," Justin said. "And then, that'll be the end of Act One. That's also where we're going to end today's rehearsal."

Everyone got up to leave. On the way out, Anthony, Rudolph, and Zach stopped Megan, Katherine, Johanna, Brooke, and Toby. Johanna, Anthony, and Toby caught up with each other. Zach talked to Brooke and Katherine. Rudolph and Megan shyly came up to each other.

"You're Megan, right? The girl that plays my grandmother…?" Rudolph asked, wincing at the last two words.

"Yeah. Hi. You're Rudolph."

By that point, their friends had already started to walk away while talking.

"You… you did really good with the scene you did today. It'll be fun working with you," Rudolph said, his face rapidly turning red.

"Thanks."

All of a sudden, Rudolph pulled Megan into a long, passionate kiss. Megan kissed him back.

"Hey, you two! Get out of here if you want to do that! School's over! No, wait! You can't even do that in school!" Justin joked.

He turned the auditorium lights off as he walked out. Megan and Rudolph laughed and left the school. Their friends were waiting outside.

As the three assistant directors left, Brooke asked Megan, "So, what just happened between you two?"

"I think I'm in love!"