You'll probably notice that Hazel's part is considerably larger than everyone else's in this chapter... I know it is. I kind of got carried away with it and there was so much I needed to fit in and... well, yeah. You'll understand when you read it ;)
LONGEST CHAPTER YET IN THIS STORY! I APPROVE OF THAT AND I'M SURE YOU DO TOO!
I'm going to start answering QUESTIONS that you guys ask me in the reviews! Since I'm too much of a lazy bum to reply to all of you in a PM. If you didn't have a question in your review, that's totally fine, because I'll still thank you for your support! You guys are awesome! So thanks to MaD aS a HaTtEr 14, Wolflover40, PenMasterEm (I totally agree, Les Mis is my favorite musical :3), dramaqueen5611, and Death is my daddy (Is your pen name saying that your father is Thanatos?) for reviewing!
dramaqueen5611 - Yeah, Sam is like Sammy. That's how I came up with that name XD
MaD aS a HaTtEr 14 and dramaqueen5611 - Leo is in this chapter. See if you can find him! :D Actually, he's not going to be that hard to find. BUT HE'S THERE!
Percy had just gotten through the singing portion of his audition (and he was sure he'd completely butchered his song), now he had to wait for his turn to do the monologue portion. He'd been given a sheet of five or six different monologues, and he was supposed to choose one that he wanted to use.
He'd been pacing around close to the bleachers, looking so intently at his sheet and trying to read it that he hadn't noticed someone's feet in his path. Like an idiot, he tripped and almost fell flat on his face, but he managed to catch himself inches before hitting the ground.
A shadow fell over Percy, and he flipped himself over and sat up, looking up at the guy who he'd tripped over. He was tall, stocky Asian guy who Percy vaguely remembered sitting behind once in algebra.
"Sorry for tripping you," he said. "I didn't even really notice you were there until you were falling."
"It's fine," Percy muttered, sitting up and brushing off his sweatshirt. "I wasn't looking where I was going." Not something Percy just liked to admit, but it was the truth.
"Right, well…" the guy looked over his shoulder at the door, then turning back to Percy, but looking at something behind him like he didn't know what to say next.
Mr. Brunner then showed up in the door, looked at his clipboard, and said, "Frank Zhang? It's time for your musical audition."
"That's me," the guy said to Percy. "I, uh… I'll see you around, I guess." Frank followed Mr. Brunner out of the gym and disappeared from Percy's view.
When Frank was gone, Percy sat down and rubbed his side where he had fallen on it. Quickly lifting up his shirt and inspecting the spot where it hurt, he saw an ugly purple bruise, and he winced. The bruise wasn't from his unplanned floor hug. It was from his stepfather.
Gabe didn't hit him often, but when he did, man, could the fat pig pack a punch. Last night, he'd walloped Percy with an empty beer bottle after Percy had refused to go fetch him some booze from the refrigerator. It hadn't done any lasting damage, but it sure had knocked the wind out of him. And apparently left a nasty bruise.
The part that killed Percy was that he couldn't complain about it to anyone. Not like he had any friends to complain to, but his mom had told him that they needed Gabe, he supported the family with the income from his job. When Percy was a baby, his mom had had to work a double job to barely make ends meet.
At least Gabe had never hit Percy's mom. If he did that, Percy was afraid he might finally snap and lash out at Gabe, possibly for the last time.
It was like living in a Disney movie, Percy thought bitterly. A twisted, sick Disney movie. Those were all about the cruel stepmothers and stepfathers, right?
The only thing was that in the movies, there was a hero. A hero who would step in and save the day and usually go through some kind of change that made them stronger, or smarter.
Percy wasn't a hero. Percy was a teenager. And a teenager with problems, at that. He wasn't particularly strong or handsome. He was just Percy.
Most of the time, he was okay with that, but there were days when he really wished a hero would surface, because heaven knows he needed one.
Annabeth sighed and leaned back, stretching and yawning. The auditions were almost over; everyone was now waiting for Mr. Brunner to come up and tell them who was needed for callbacks. Annabeth wasn't sure which she would rather have, a callback, which would mean she'd have a better chance of getting a part, or no callback, which would mean she could go home. It had been a long day.
Her brother Malcolm, who was in the grade below her even though he was only a few months younger, nudged her and said, "Think you'll get a part?"
"I don't know," she replied, closing her notebook and carefully placing it inside her backpack. Some of her favorite designs were in those pages, and she didn't want to risk getting them bent or folded. "I still don't even know if I want a part."
"Well, I do," he said. "I think the whole acting thing will be fun for a change." Malcolm had been on the stage crew alongside Annabeth for the last two years.
Before Annabeth could open her mouth to reply, a loud shushing was heard from several other people around her, and she looked at the door, where Mr. Brunner was standing with his clipboard.
"I need to see the following people back in the drama room for callbacks. I might ask you to do another monologue, or sing me a verse of your song, and if you don't get called, that doesn't necessarily mean you aren't getting a part." He then rattled off about twenty names, which was about half the group, and the ones who hadn't been called began to pack up.
Annabeth's name had been one of the last to be called. Malcolm hadn't been called and was free to go. "Can I take your car and get a coffee or something?" he asked almost pleadingly. He knew he couldn't go home without Annabeth, as both had come that morning in the same car.
"Knock yourself out, little brother," Annabeth said, tossing him the key. He slung his backpack over one shoulder and left, and Annabeth went down to the drama room.
Everyone was sitting in a desk, and Annabeth's gaze swept around the room as she tried to find a place she could sit. She spotted an open seat next to a girl with dark hair, and went to sit down next to her. When she did, the girl looked up in surprise.
"Oh… I'm sorry, I thought you were… well, someone else," the girl mumbled.
"Um… well, I'm not someone else, I guess. I'm me," Annabeth replied lamely, and in an attempt to improve the conversation, she added, "I'm Annabeth Chase. What's your name?"
"Piper McLean," she said quickly, so fast Annabeth almost couldn't understand her. McLean. The name seemed oddly familiar to Annabeth, but she couldn't think where she'd heard it before. Was there an actor or something with the same last name? Possibly. Yeah, that must be it.
When Piper didn't say anything else, Annabeth drummed her fingers on the desk, biting her lip. She wished Mr. Brunner would ask her to do something so she could escape this rather awkward situation, but when she glanced over at him, he was listening to a tall blonde boy sing. Annabeth recognized him as Jason Grace from her AP classes. "Do you like to draw?" she blurted out. It was the first thing that had come to mind.
"Not much," Piper said in that same quiet voice. "Sometimes."
Annabeth wanted to pull out her hair in frustration. This girl would just not carry the conversation!
"Annabeth Chase?" Annabeth whipped around at the sound of her name, to see that Jason Grace was done singing and had gone to go sit with some guys that Annabeth assumed were his friends, and Mr. Brunner was now calling her name. She breathed a sigh of relief, got up, and walked over to him.
"All right. Now, I'd like you to read for me monologue number five…"
Nico kind of wished he hadn't been called back, seeing as the people who were called back had to sing in front of everyone else.
He knew that if he did end up getting into the play, he'd have to sing in front of everyone, but honestly, he was starting to question whether it was a good idea to show up here in the first place. He was a wallflower. Practically a nobody! What did he think he was doing?
So much for showing them that I belong, Nico thought. If anything, he was proving that he didn't belong here at all. There was no way he was going to be able to be in a play if he got sweaty palms singing in front of twenty other people.
"Nico di Angelo?" Mr. Brunner called, and Nico slowly stood up and made his way to the front of the room, his gaze snapping back to the others every couple seconds. There were only a few people actually watching him, most of the others were talking to their friends or were extremely focused on their homework. "Could you sing the end of your song, from 'I won't look down, I must not fall?'"
Nico nodded. His song was 'This Is the Moment' from Jekyll and Hyde, a song he'd thought rather appropriate for his situation. Oh, how clever he'd thought himself when he chose his song…
He surreptitiously wiped his sweaty hands off on his pants and cleared his throat, despite the fact that Mr. Brunner had told them throat clearing hurt your voice more than it helped it. He began to sing, starting off a little timidly but forcing himself to get louder as he went on. He even tried to make his expression, normally still as stone and never changing, into one of intense hope. It was hard. Nico was about as proficient with body language as a potato.
He began to sing the third from last line, "This was the moment… the greatest mo-"
The line was never finished. In the middle of the word 'moment' his voice cracked, badly. Blushing furiously, and forcing himself to not look out at everyone else, he said, "Sorry. That doesn't… usually happen. When I sing." Was he really trying to make up excuses for himself? He'd failed, there was no other way around it. He wanted to kick himself into next Wednesday.
"That's perfectly all right," Mr. Brunner said, making a note on his clipboard. "You can go sit down."
Face still burning, Nico walked - more stumbling than walking - to an empty desk, and collapsed in it. Of course his voice just had to go out there. He'd actually thought he had a chance, after he'd been called back, but any of those hopes were dashed now. Mr. Brunner wouldn't want him in the play. It would be a disaster, he could see it - the spotlight would focus on Nico, he'd start singing his solo, and then his voice would squeak out of control and the lights would go down quickly as Nico was shamefully shoved off the stage. Who will fill in for this boy? He can't sing!
Nico rubbed his eyes furiously. There was his imagination, running wild again. He tended to fabricate the worst possible situations, even for everyday stuff, like getting your cafeteria lunch and going to sit down. What if he tripped on his shoelace, and fell, and his food spilled, and what if he happened to fall right in front of the table where the group he'd left sat? He could go on and on like that for ages if he let himself.
Stop that, he thought angrily. Enough things had gone wrong today. He didn't need his mind adding any more.
After Mr. Brunner dismissed those who were needed at callbacks, Hazel grabbed her backpack, pulled her phone out of it, and sent her dad a text saying she needed a ride home. She put it down, then walked out to the front door of the school building and sighed as she watched the older students, one by one, get into their cars and pull out of the parking lot. She really wished she could be just a year older so she could actually drive herself places instead of relying on her parents to do everything for her.
The only people left were herself, Sam, and two other guys who Hazel thought were in the grade above her. One was short, dark-haired, and pale, and the other was a Latino boy with curly, unruly hair. He was messing around with a few paper clips.
"So how do you think you did?" Sam asked. "I think I did okay on the singing part, but as for the monologue, I think I completely botched it up around the middle, I was stumbling all over my words and I think I was taking my breaths in awkward places and-"
"Sam, I'm sure you did fine," Hazel interrupted her friend's spiel. Hazel couldn't say the same for herself. She'd sang Colors of the Wind, and she was so sure her voice had gone extremely flat on the chorus. During the monologue, she'd tried to say part of it from memory so she could pay more attention to gestures and making eye contact with her audience rather than reading the words, but she'd accidentally trailed off in the middle of a sentence, forgot what came next, and tried desperately to find her place again while stuttering strangely. "You're you, remember?"
Sam raised an eyebrow at Hazel skeptically. "That means nothing, my friend. Absolutely nothing. You've known me for five years and you haven't figured out how much of a klutz I am yet?"
The Latino guy let out a short laugh, looking at Hazel and Sam and putting his paper clips in his pocket. "You can't talk about klutziness in front of me, the guy who accidentally lit a Christmas tree on fire."
"You did not do that," Sam said, crossing her arms. Hazel never failed to be surprised at Sam's bravado. They didn't even know this guy, and she was talking to him like he was an old friend! "How would that even happen?"
"I shoved it into the fireplace," he said simply. "It was totally an accident, though. I'm not a pyromaniac, no need to worry, ladies. Hold on - I don't know your names. You are?"
"Samantha Barron," Sam replied. "Pleasure's all yours, I'm sure."
Hazel elbowed her and said jokingly, "We don't be rude to strangers, Sam." Then, turning to the guy, she said, "I'm Hazel Levesque."
"Leo Valdez," he said with an overdramatic bow. "Lovely to meet the both of you. What's your name?" he asked the guy standing in the corner, looking like he wanted to melt into the shadows.
"Nico di Angelo," he said, so quietly Hazel could hardly hear him.
Leo whipped out his phone. "Numbers?" Then he laughed. "Just kidding, you don't have to give me your number if you don't want to. I did kind of just meet you two seconds ago, and you never know, maybe I'll give it to a kidnapper on the way home!"
Sam laughed, and Hazel realized with a start that after she'd put down her phone to text her dad, she'd never picked it back up again, and it was still in the drama room. "I left my phone in there," she muttered to Sam, walked back downstairs and carefully opened the door.
Mr. Brunner and the musical director, Mr. Silenus, were deep in conversation, and she snuck in quietly so she wouldn't disturb them. She stopped short, however, when she heard her name being spoken.
"...Sam Barron or Hazel Levesque," Mr. Brunner was saying. "That's who I'd recommend for the part of Fantine. Sam has a great voice, but Hazel has a perfect personality for the part."
"I Dreamed a Dream is one of the most famous musical numbers in the entire production," Mr. Silenus replied. "That's not a song we can just rely on the acting ability for. We need someone with a dynamic voice."
"Both girls could play the part well," Mr. Brunner said thoughtfully.
Hazel could hear her heartbeat pounding in her head. Mr. Brunner and Mr. Silenus were considering casting her as one of the most major roles in the play? It was between her and Sam? She scolded herself for even getting her hopes up about it. Like Mr. Silenus said, they needed a great singer for the part, and that was definitely Sam. Hazel would be stuck being a chorus girl, if she got a part at all.
"...Hazel?" Hazel heard her name being called, but she didn't register it completely until the second or third time. She snapped back into reality and saw Mr. Brunner standing right in front of her. Mr. Silenus was standing off to the side, pulling on his coat.
"Oh, hello, Mr. Brunner," Hazel said quickly. "I left my phone in here, so I had to come back and get it." She could see it from right where she was standing, it was laying on a chair that was positioned against the wall.
"By all means," Mr. Brunner said, moving out of her way, and she went and grabbed it. Mr. Silenus left, leaving just Hazel and Mr. Brunner in the room.
"You did well at auditions today," he said. "I was very impressed."
"Thanks," Hazel replied in a voice that she hoped didn't sound shaky. "I wasn't sure if I did so great, but I guess it turned out okay."
"Your friend Sam did wonderfully, too," he added. "It'll be tough to decide with all the talent I saw today, but I'll have the cast list up outside my room by Monday."
"Yeah, I wasn't so sure if Sam was even going to try out until today," Hazel said nonchalantly, remembering the conversation she'd heard. "She's part of this all-state choir thing, and they practice a lot. It's pretty intense." Hazel couldn't stop once she got going, so she continued, gradually feeling more uncomfortable as she went. "And since they're always practicing, I wasn't sure if she'd have the time to carry a large role in the play." That wasn't true. The choir practiced three times a week, and in the afternoons. Drama practice was in the evenings. Sam would easily be able to make it to both, at least up until dress rehearsals and performance nights, where everyone was required to be there right after school to get ready.
Mr. Brunner nodded. "I see."
The reality of what Hazel had just done hit her suddenly, and she felt a prickling sense of unease that was starting to overwhelm her. "Um. Yeah. I better go now, see you on Monday, Mr. Brunner!" Hazel left the room, walking back upstairs in clipped, awkward strides.
"Are you okay?" Sam asked when she reached the front door. "You look kind of sick." Leo had left, now it was just the two of them and that Nico boy.
"I'm fine," Hazel said, rubbing her sweaty palms off on her pants. Sam's concerned about me, when I just lied about her to our director so I'd have a better chance of getting a part. I'm a terrible friend… I'm a terrible person.
"If you're sure," Sam shrugged. "Leo had to leave, but he said to tell you bye. He seems like an okay guy, doesn't he?"
"I guess," Hazel mumbled, not able to look her friend in the eye.
What have I done?